Drupalcon London 2011: Project Application Process Revisited
21
The Project Application Process, Revisited Greg Dunlap Alan Palazzo Angela Byron Thursday, September 1, 2011
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Presenters:Angie Byron, Greg DunlapProblem: In order to create full-fledged modules, new contributors must go through a strenuous peer review process that involves checking for security problems, misuse of Drupal's APIs, coding standards, and duplication.Last year at DrupalCon Copenhagen, a session was given that explained why we had a project approval process, and talked about the damage this process does to the community, to attempt to come up with a plan to help ease some of the suffering.A year later, we now have Git, and we have sandboxes available to all authenticated users. Have things improved for the better, or gotten worse? How has the process changed?Proposed solution: Data. We mine the Drupal.org database and report our findings. What's the average wait time of people in the approval queue? Is the review team actually finding and stopping security holes before they get introduced? What's our attrition rate like, after someone goes through the application process? Is webchick just overreacting?From here, we discuss next steps. We'll propose some of our own, but are really interested in a discussion from the folks in the room about what can be done to balance the legitimate needs of the security team and our community, without bludgeoning new contributors in the face.
Transcript of Drupalcon London 2011: Project Application Process Revisited
- 1. The Project Application Process, Revisited Greg Dunlap Alan Palazzo Angela ByronThursday, September 1, 2011
- 2. The process 1. Create a sandbox 2. Commit your code 3. Create an issue in the Project applications queue 4. Wait for someone to review/RTBC it 5. Prot!Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 3. The problem 1. Create a sandbox 2. Commit your code 3. Create an issue in the Project applications queue 4. Wait for someone to review/RTBC it 5. Prot!Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 4. Step 4 tends to turn this... I love Drupal!! I cant wait to give back!Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 5. ...into this. :( Screw you guys. Im going to Github.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 6. Why do we do this to people? Impart community knowledge (coding standards, best practices, etc.) Prevent proliferation of insecure modules Prevent module duplication Reduce insecure/broken code Ensure license/policy complianceThursday, September 1, 2011
- 7. So, is it effective? Heres what the data shows.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 8. What data we gathered Spot-checked ~60 applications (mix of approved/declined), checked for: Reasons applications were sent back What happened after approval/denial Number of days people were in process http://lb.cm/project-application-stats-spreadsheetThursday, September 1, 2011
- 9. Reasons for needs work Rank Reason Percentage 1 Coding standards 64% 2 API usage 45% 3 Application rules 33% 4 Duplication 19% 5 Legal or external libs policy 12% 6 Security 5%Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 10. Conclusions New developers dont know coding standards, nor have in-depth knowledge of Drupal APIs yet. Duh; neither did you when you were new. Our application rules and licensing policies are confusing. Its hard to nd modules on drupal.org. (generally) Only security team members nd security holes in new modules.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 11. Process sustainability http://jthorson.doesdrupal.com/project-apps-pt1 Average length in queue: 88 daysThursday, September 1, 2011
- 12. Conclusions Process is unsustainable: too many eager users, not enough people helping However, we do get a number of benets: Easy way to impart Drupal community norms on new people Easy way to catch legal issues before they happenThursday, September 1, 2011
- 13. So what do we do now?Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 14. #1: Figure out our priorities What behaviour do we want to promote, what behaviour do we not want to promote?Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 15. #2: Focus on automation Keep humans on things humans do well; let machines handle coding standards/security/legal review.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 16. #3: Separate mentorship from access Create a view of new peoples commits. Have code review team focus on helping those people.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 17. #4: Create better metrics/search tools on drupal.org Dont take the lack of these tools out on eager new people.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 18. Concrete proposal Get jthorsons automated Coder review code deployed on d.o Expand with Legal / API sanity / security checking Display Coder status on project page to indicate project quality to maintainers on full projects and all users on sandboxes Feed data into Solr to make search not suck Add app review bingo Add steps for what new reviewers can do Add git clone command to project issueThursday, September 1, 2011
- 19. Other ideas Move reviews to rst stable release, rather than rst submission Enable dev releases on sandboxes Grant full project upgrade only to projects with stable releases Time-box ability to get a namespace (e.g. 2 months since rst push)Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 20. But seriously, lets gure this out this time.Thursday, September 1, 2011
- 21. The real proposal Automated coder review on project page Sec. / legal to follow Allow dev tarballs on sandboxes Move approval process to stable release, limit project namespace to stable releaseThursday, September 1, 2011
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