Mailman 3 May 2019 - python-committers

GitHub: remove the "needs backport to 3.5" label?
by Victor Stinner 20 Aug '19

20 Aug '19

Hi, Python 3.5 entered security fix only mode. Should we now remove the "needs backport to 3.5" label? Other security only branches don't have this label neither (3.3 and 3.4). Victor

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Requirements / Guidelines for module maintainers? [was: PEP 594]
by Ethan Furman 31 May '19

31 May '19

Greetings! I have a non-core dev willing to help maintain the cgi/cgitb modules along with myself. Would this consist of adding the both of us as experts on those modules, and then I would be responsible for the mechanics of approving/merging any PRs? Assuming this individual does well we should make them a core-dev at some point, but presently they have no experience contributing to the Python codebase. -- ~Ethan~

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Python 3.8.0b1 branch cut-off moved to Monday
by Łukasz Langa 30 May '19

30 May '19

I received a few pleas to create the 3.8 branch on Monday. Weekends are apparently when unpaid contributors can spend some extra time on their labor of love. Given the current flurry of activity, I see no issue allowing for those extra three days. Happy hacking, please leave the branch squeaky clean by Sunday EOD AoE. - Ł

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PEP 595: Improving bugs.python.org
by Ezio Melotti 23 May '19

23 May '19

Hello, Berker and I have been working on a PEP that suggests we keep using and improving bugs.python.org and Roundup instead of switching to GitHub Issues as proposed by PEP 581. The PEP covers: * What are the advantages of Roundup over GitHub issues; * What features are missing in Roundup and how can we add them; * Issues with PEP 581; * Issues with the migration plan proposed by PEP 588; The rendered version of PEP 595 is available at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0595/ For reference, you can consult PEP 581 and 588 at https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0581/ and https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0588/ The full text of the PEP is include below. We are planning to update the PEP to include the feedback we receive and to update the status of features as we implement them (we also have a Google Summer of Code students working on it). Best Regards, Ezio Melotti ================ PEP: 595 Title: Improving bugs.python.org Author: Ezio Melotti <ezio.melotti(a)gmail.com>, Berker Peksag <berker.peksag(a)gmail.com> Status: Draft Type: Process Content-Type: text/x-rst Created: 12-May-2019 Abstract ======== This PEP proposes a list of improvements to make bugs.python.org more usable for contributors and core developers. This PEP also discusses why remaining on Roundup should be preferred over switching to GitHub Issues, as proposed by :pep:`581`. Motivation ========== On May 14th, 2019 :pep:`581` has been accepted [#]_ without much public discussion and without a clear consensus [#]_. The PEP contains factual errors and doesn't address some of the issues that the migration to GitHub Issues might present. Given the scope of the migration, the amount of work required, and how it will negatively affect the workflow during the transition phase, this decision should be re-evaluated. Roundup advantages over GitHub Issues ===================================== This section discusses reasons why Roundup should be preferred over GitHub Issues and Roundup features that are not available on GitHub Issues. * **Roundup is the status quo.** Roundup has been an integral part of the CPython workflow for years. It is a stable product that has been tested and customized to adapt to our needs as the workflow evolved. It is possible to gradually improve it and avoid the disruption that a switch to a different system would inevitabily bring to the workflow. * **Open-source and Python powered.** Roundup is an open-source project and is written in Python. By using it and supporting it, we also support the Python ecosystem. Several features developed for bpo have also been ported to upstream Roundup over the years. * **Fully customizable.** Roundup can be (and has been) fully customized to fit our needs. * **Finer-grained access control.** Roundup allows the creation of different roles with different permissions (e.g. create, view, edit, etc.) for each individual property, and users can have multiple roles. * **Flexible UI.** While Roundup UI might look dated, it is convenient and flexible. For example, on the issue page, each field (e.g. title, type, versions, status, linked files and PRs, etc.) have appropriate UI elements (input boxes, dropdowns, tables, etc.) that are easy to set and also provide a convenient way to get info about the issue at a glance. The number of fields, their values, and the UI element they use is also fully customizable. GitHub only provides labels. The issue list page presents the issues in a compact and easy to read table with separate columns for different fields. For comparison, Roundup lists 50 issues in a screen, whereas GitHub takes two screens to shows 25 issues. * **Advanced search.** Roundup provides an accurate way to search and filter by using any combination of issue fields. It is also possible to customize the number of results and the fields displayed in the table, and the sorting and grouping (up to two levels). bpo also provides predefined summaries (e.g. "Created by you", "Assigned to you", etc.) and allows the creation of custom search queries that can be conveniently accessed from the sidebar. * **Nosy list autocomplete.** The nosy list has an autocomplete feature that suggests maintainers and experts. The suggestions are automatically updated when the experts index [#]_ changes. * **Dependencies and Superseders.** Roundup allows to specify dependencies that must be addressed before the current issues can be closed and a superseder issue to easily mark duplicates [#]_. The list of dependencies can also be used to create meta-issues that references several other sub-issues [#]_. Improving Roundup ================= This section lists some of the issues mentioned by :pep:`581` and other desired features and discusses how they can be implemented by improving Roundup and/or our instance. * **REST API support.** A REST API will make integration with other services and the development of new tools and applications easiers. Upstream Roundup now supports a REST API. Updating the tracker will make the REST API available. * **GitHub login support.** This will allow users to login to bugs.python.org (bpo) without having to create a new account. It will also solve issues with confirmation emails being marked as spam, and provide two-factor authentication. A patch to add this functionality is already available and is being integrated at the time of writing [#]_. * **Markdown support and message preview and editing.** This feature will allow the use of Markdown in messages and the ability to preview the message before the submission and edit it afterward. This can be done, but it will take some work. Possible solutions have been proposed on the roundup-devel mailing list [#]_. * **"Remove me from nosy list" button.** Add a button on issue pages to remove self from the nosy list. This feature will be added during GSoC 2019. * **Mobile friendly theme.** Current theme of bugs.python.org looks dated and it doesn't work well with mobile browsers. A mobile-friendly theme that is more modern but still familiar will be added. * **Add PR link to BPO emails.** Currently bpo emails don't include links to the corresponding PRs. A patch [#]_ is available to change the content of the bpo emails from:: components: +Tkinter versions: +Python 3.4 pull_requests: +42 to:: components: +Tkinter versions: +Python 3.4 pull_request: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/341 * **Python 3 support.** Using Python 3 will make maintenance easier. Upstream Roundup now supports Python 3. Updating the tracker will allow us to switch to Python 3. The instances will need to be updated as well. * **Use upstream Roundup.** We currently use a fork of Roundup with a few modifications, most notably the GitHub integration. If this is ported upstream, we can start using upstream Roundup without having to maintain our fork. PEP 581 issues ============== This section addresses some errors and inaccuracies found in :pep:`581`. The "Why GitHub?" section of PEP 581 lists features currently available on GitHub Issues but not on Roundup. Some of this features are currently supported: * "Ability to reply to issue and pull request conversations via email." * Being able to reply by email has been one of the core features of Roundup since the beginning. It is also possible to create new issues or close existing ones, set or modify fields, and add attachments. * "Email notifications containing metadata, integrated with Gmail, allowing systematic filtering of emails." * Emails sent by Roundup contains metadata that can be used for filtering. * "Additional privacy, such as offering the user a choice to hide an email address, while still allowing communication with the user through @-mentions." * Email addresses are hidden by default to users that are not registered. Registered users can see other users' addresses because we configured the tracker to show them. It can easily be changed if desired. Users can still be added to the nosy list by using their username even if their address is hidden. * "Ability to automatically close issues when a PR has been merged." * The GitHub integration of Roundup automatically closes issues when a commit that contains "fixes issue <id>" is merged. (Alternative spellings such as "closes" or "bug" are also supported.) See [#]_ for a recent example of this feature. * "Support for permalinks, allowing easy quoting and copying & pasting of source code." * Roundup has permalinks for issues, messages, attachments, etc. In addition, Roundup allows to easily rewrite broken URLs in messages (e.g. if the code hosting changes). * "Core developers, volunteers, and the PSF don't have to maintain the issue infrastructure/site, giving us more time and resources to focus on the development of Python." * While this is partially true, additional resources are required to write and maintain bots. In some cases, bots are required to workaround GitHub's lack of features rather than expanding. [#]_ was written specifically to workaround GitHub's email integration. Updating our bots to stay up-to-date with changes in the GitHub API has also maintenance cost. [#]_ took two days to be fixed. In addition, we will still need to maintain Roundup for bpo (even if it becomes read-only) and for the other trackers we currently host/maintain (Jython [#]_ and Roundup [#]_). The "Issues with Roundup / bpo" section of :pep:`581` lists some issues that have already been fixed: * "The upstream Roundup code is in Mercurial. Without any CI available, it puts heavy burden on the few existing maintainers in terms of reviewing, testing, and applying patches." * While Roundup uses Mercurial by default, there is a git clone available on GitHub [#]_. Roundup also has CI available [#]_ [#]_. * "There is no REST API available. There is an open issue in Roundup for adding REST API. Last activity was in 2016." * The REST API has been integrated and it's now available in Roundup. * "Users email addresses are exposed. There is no option to mask it." * Exposing addresses to registered and logged in users was a decision taken when our instance was set up. This has now been changed to make the email addresses hidden for regular users too (Developers and Coordinators can still see them). The "Email address"" column from the user listing page [#]_ has been removed too. * "It sends a number of unnecessary emails and notifications, and it is difficult, if not impossible, to configure." * This can be configured. * "Creating an account has been a hassle. There have been reports of people having trouble creating accounts or logging in." * The main issue is confirmation emails being marked as spam. Work has been done to resolve the issue. Migration considerations ======================== This section describes issues with the migrations that might not have been addressed by :pep:`581` and :pep:`588`. :pep:`588` suggests to add a button to migrate issues to GitHub only when someone wants to keep working on them. This approach has several issues: * bpo will need to be updated in order to add a button that, once pressed, creates a new issue on GitHub, copies over all the messages, attachments, and creates/adds label for the existing fields. Permissions will also need to be tweaked to make individual issues read-only once they are migrated, and to prevent users to create new accounts. * The issues will be split between two trackers; searching issues will take significant more effort. * The conversion from Roundup to GitHub is lossy, unless all the bpo fields are converted into labels or preserved somewhere else. * bpo converts a number of references into links, including issue, message, and PR IDs, changeset numbers, legacy SVN revision numbers, paths to files in the repo, files in tracebacks (detecting the correct branch), links to devguide pages and sections [#]_. This happens when messages are requested so it is possible to create the correct link (e.g. all the file links used to point to hg.python.org and now point to GitHub). If the links are hardcoded during the migration, it will be difficult (if not impossible) to change them later. If they aren't, they will either be lost, or a tool to generate the links and updating them will need to be written. * GitHub doesn't provide a way to set and preserve issue IDs if they are migrated automatically with the use of a button. (Some projects managed to preserve the IDs by contaacting the GitHub staff and migrating the issues *en masse*.) * On top of the work and changes required to migrate to GitHub issues, we will still need to keep running and maintaining Roundup, for both our instance (read-only) and for the Jython and Roundup trackers (read-write). In addition to the issues listed in the "Open issues" section of :pep:`588`, this issues will need to be addressed: * GitHub is properietary and there is risk of vendor lock-in. Their business model might change and they could shut down altogether. * Switching to GitHub Issues will likely increase the number of invalid reports and increase the triaging effort. This concern has been raised in the past in a Zulip topic [#]_. There have been already cases where people posted comments on PRs that required moderators to mark them as off-topic or disruptive, delete them altogether, and even lock the conversation [#]_. * Roundup sends weekly reports to python-dev with a summary that includes new issues, recent issues with no replies, recent issues waiting for review, most discussed issues, closed issues, and deltas for open/closed/total issue counts [#]_. The report provides an easy way to keep track of the tracker activity and to make sure that issues that require attention are noticed. The data collect by the weekly report is also use to generate statistics and graphs that can be used to gain new insights [#]_. * There are currently two mailing lists where Roundup posts new tracker issues and all messages respectively: new-bugs-announce [#]_ and python-bugs-list [#]_. A new system will need to be developed to preserve this functionality. These MLs offer additional ways to keep track of the tracker activity. References ========== .. [#] [Python-Dev] PEP 581 (Using GitHub issues for CPython) is accepted https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2019-May/157399.html .. [#] [python-committers] [Python-Dev] PEP 581 (Using GitHub issues for CPython) is accepted https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-committers/2019-May/006755.html .. [#] Experts Index -- Python Devguide https://devguide.python.org/experts/ .. [#] An example of superseded issues: "re.sub() replaces only several matches" https://bugs.python.org/issue12078 .. [#] An example of meta issue using dependencies to track sub-issues: "Meta-issue: support of the android platform"" https://bugs.python.org/issue26865 .. [#] Support logging in with GitHub https://github.com/python/bugs.python.org/issues/7 .. [#] Re: [Roundup-devel] PEP 581 and Google Summer of Code https://sourceforge.net/p/roundup/mailman/message/36667828/ .. [#] [Tracker-discuss] [issue624] bpo emails contain useless non-github pull_request number - users want a link to actual github PR https://mail.python.org/pipermail/tracker-discuss/2018-June/004547.html .. [#] The commit reported in msg342882 closes the issue (see the history below) https://bugs.python.org/issue36951#msg342882 .. [#] The cpython-emailer-webhook project https://github.com/berkerpeksag/cpython-emailer-webhook .. [#] A recent incident caused by GitHub https://github.com/python/bedevere/pull/163 .. [#] Jython issue tracker https://bugs.jython.org/ .. [#] Roundup issue tracker https://issues.roundup-tracker.org/ .. [#] GitHub clone of Roundup https://github.com/roundup-tracker/roundup .. [#] Travis-CI for Roundup https://travis-ci.org/roundup-tracker/roundup) and codecov .. [#] Codecov for Roundup https://codecov.io/gh/roundup-tracker/roundup/commits .. [#] User listing -- Python tracker https://bugs.python.org/user?@sort=username .. [#] Generating Special Links in a Comment -- Python Devguide https://devguide.python.org/triaging/#generating-special-links-in-a-comment .. [#] The New-bugs-announce mailing list https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/new-bugs-announce .. [#] The Python-bugs-list mailing list https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-bugs-list .. [#] An example of [Python-Dev] Summary of Python tracker Issues https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2019-May/157483.html .. [#] Issues stats -- Python tracker https://bugs.python.org/issue?@template=stats .. [#] s/n ratio -- Python -- Zulip https://python.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/130206-pep581/topic/s.2Fn.20rat… .. [#] For example this and other related PRs: https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/9099 Copyright ========= This document has been placed in the public domain. .. Local Variables: mode: indented-text indent-tabs-mode: nil sentence-end-double-space: t fill-column: 70 coding: utf-8 End:

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Azure build operations
by Antoine Pitrou 21 May '19

21 May '19

Hello, How can I restart a failed build on Azure? https://dev.azure.com/Python/cpython/_build/results?buildId=43161&view=logs… Regards Antoine.

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Re: [python-committers] [Python-Dev] PEP 581 (Using GitHub issues for CPython) is accepted
by Paul Moore 21 May '19

21 May '19

On Wed, 15 May 2019 at 09:51, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis(a)pitrou.net> wrote: > > On Tue, 14 May 2019 18:11:14 -0700 > Barry Warsaw <barry(a)python.org> wrote: > > > As the BDFL-Delegate for PEP 581, and with the unanimous backing of the rest of the Steering Council, I hereby Accept this PEP. > > For future reference, is it possible to post the Steering Council's > reflection and rationale on the PEP? Also, is there an archive of the discussions anywhere? The PEP says discussions happened on Zulip, but I don't follow that and I don't know where I can find an archived copy of the discussions. It's not as if I'm going to object to the PEP (I'd have participated in the discussions if I had a strong opinion) but I am curious. Paul

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PEP 581 (Using GitHub issues for CPython) is accepted
by Barry Warsaw 15 May '19

15 May '19

As the BDFL-Delegate for PEP 581, and with the unanimous backing of the rest of the Steering Council, I hereby Accept this PEP. We would like to thank Mariatta for championing PEP 581, and to all the contributors to the discussion, both pro and con. We appreciate your candor and respect for your fellow developers. The SC believes that this migration is in the best interest of the Python community, and we look forward to the elaboration of the detailed migration plan (PEP 588). We also extend our heartfelt thanks Berker, Ezio, and everyone who has helped develop and maintain Roundup and bugs.python.org over the years. bpo has been a critical component for Python development for a very long time, and we all greatly appreciate the time, effort, and devotion you have put into this resource. https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0581/ Onward we go! The migration will be a large effort, with much planning, development, and testing, and we welcome volunteers who wish to help make it a reality. I look forward to your contributions on PEP 588 and the actual work of migrating issues to GitHub. Cheers, -Barry (BDFL-Delegate, and on behalf of the Python Steering Council)

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Promote Mark Sapiro and Abhilash Raj as core developers
by Barry Warsaw 14 May '19

14 May '19

If you like the way mail.python.org and Mailman (both 2 and 3) Just Work, and are about as reliable as any service can be, we have our wonderful postmasters to thank. Mark has been a postmaster for years and is currently maintaining GNU Mailman, both as a project and as a service on mpo. Abhilash maintains the GNU Mailman 3 branch, has been project leader since I retired in that role back in 2017, and also maintains the Mailman 3 instance on mail.python.org. More than that, because of their roles as Mailman developers, they have a deep knowledge of email in general, and in the email package in particular. As I rarely dabble in the email package these days, and RDM --who did a fantastic job of implementing the new APIs and features in email for Python 3— has also scaled back his involvement, it means that the email package doesn’t get much attention these days. Both Mark and Abhilash have an interest in helping to maintain the email package moving forward, and both are eminently qualified to do so. I have worked with both of them for many many years, and I have the utmost respect for their technical and social skills, their understanding of Python processes, and their love of the Python language and community. I've sprinted with them at many Pycons, until I scaled back my involvement with Mailman. Both are here sprinting at Pycon 2019. Therefore, with their permission, I propose extending core developer rights to both Mark and Abhilash. As per PEP 13, I plan on opening a vote on Discourse next week (once I kind of recover from Pycon) for each developer. Cheers, -Barry

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miss-islington backport pipeline is stalled?
by Gregory P. Smith 09 May '19

09 May '19

Yesterday it failed to produce a backport or tell me that it couldn't (after the "i'm now working on ..." message was left on the master PR). I waited a couple hours just in case and ran cherry_picker myself instead. Same thing today apparently on https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/13192 assuming the usual backport latency is no more than a minute or two. -gps

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Farewell, Python 3.4
by Larry Hastings 09 May '19

09 May '19

It's with a note of sadness that I announce the final retirement of Python 3.4. The final release was back in March, but I didn't get around to actually closing and deleting the 3.4 branch until this morning. Python 3.4 introduced many features we all enjoy in modern Python--the asyncio, ensurepip, and enum packages, just to name three. It's a release I hope we all remember fondly. My eternal thanks to all the members of the release team that worked on Python 3.4: Georg Brandl Julien Palard Martin von Löwis Ned Deily Steve Dower Terry Reedy and all the engineers of the Python infrastructure team. Special thanks to Benjamin Peterson and Ned Deily, who frequently scurried around behind the scenes cleaning up the messes I cluelessly left in my wake. Having closed 3.4, I am now retired as Python 3.4 Release Manager. I regret to inform all of you that you're still stuck with me as Python 3.5 Release Manager until sometime next year. My very best wishes, //arry/

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