• PackagingWG
• 2020-02-13-pip

pip syncup meeting Teamwide, 13 Feb 2020

Attendees: [were not explicitly noted, but: Georgia, Sumana, Tzu-Ping, Paul, Bernard, Pradyun]

Topics:

[CZI Meeting (Georgia added) -- moved to Zulip, discussing in https://python.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/218659-pip-development/topic/preparing.20for.20CZI.20meeting ]

1. schedule interview with (remaining) pip maintainers/core contributors
   1. Bernard is going to be sending out a calendar thing. Where to send?
      1. Who do you want to interview? All pip maintainers? all pip contributors?
         1. People who understand the direction pip needs to take ... people who understand issues people have at a high level.... people who have evidence-based opinions on what the problems are.... maintainers and "core" contributors
         2. may need to go out further.... this is a start
      2. send to Zulip and IRC (#pypa + #pypa-dev) to start .... send personal invitations to the people who wrote the things you are reading.
      3. Talk with Paul Moore, Pradyun. Start getting referrals, snowball from there
      4. TODO: After this call - Sumana and Bernard to review his offline list. DONE

Bernard/Sumana - might want to discuss the "how openly to discuss"

2. “Collaborate with downstreams and users about config flags and transition schedules” (from the work schedule for February)

• Let's develop a concrete plan? Pradyun-on-mobile: I think this is about the resolver rollout. (in that case my below comment was off-topic)

  • https://github.com/pypa/pip/issues/5346 (the most recent list of relevant linux distros folks)

  Config options "groups" worth "broad" review: index interaction, build process

  Sumana: There will be something like a first step of making a small inventory of who the downstreams are, the users, power users. and open source projects/institutions and work it in different ways. this will be similar to who are pips users. We'd do some work on what to change - the resolver behaviour, some way for people to try the new resolver, config flag, choose what aspects of the new bachiour they can use. we are trying to get this out by july. Sumana can work with paul, pradyun tzu-ing and send out a message to these groups about these changes. This could be similar to this notification for a different change https://wiki.python.org/psf/WarehousePackageMaintainerTesting. We sent a short message about the change, with the link. Maybe look at the issues list for people who have reported resolver issues, and ask them directly either to help with testing, or for guidance on who could assist us?

  • Sumana: +1 Can go from #988 Paul: This sounds reasonable. It is going to be about finding people, getting people who are having issues with the resolver. Maybe we can te issues list to find people who can help us test it. Virtuanlenv have made a release that has had an issue with the resolver. It might make sense to get Gabor involved to fix the issue.
    • Talk with Bernat Gabor (person behind the new virtualenv rewrite).

TODO: Bernard and Sumana should collaborate on developing a rough starter list of groups to reach out to (cc Georgia): SIMULTANEOUSLY - start on

• here is what is going to change
• here is what we want input on
• here is the start of a timeline about when you can start to try it and when we want to do a production release

have that by Tues the 18th

• TODO: Paul to do initial draft -- post on Zulip

Would probably want to consider users being broken due to stricter behavior of new resolver

3. Documentation improvements (pradyun/Sumana discussion pprobably)

• Questions to answer: there are ideas he has, wants to run them past someone. Been meaning to post on Zulip.
• TODO: Go ahead and post on Zulip.

Simply Secure will likely have some stuff to share this coming Mon/Tues - research synthesis

Who is blocked?

• Pradyun: blocked on documentation things. Paul can help. Bernard can help with "plain language" stuff.

• Bernard & Georgia: blocked on interview stuff. Sumana to help

  • Bernard: there is a steep learning curve. Over the past week, have been getting very helpful info from Pradyun.
    • Sumana: hoping you are the last person to experience this floundering
    • Figuring out Nicole's availability

When we (UX team!) have more polished (formulated) outputs, they can go on [the Python user guide](https://packaging.python.org/)

Where should ongoing resources go? Usability/UX knowledge base? (who users/communities are, other resources)

• Idea: packaging.python.org

  currently: GitHub wiki, personal notes, etc.