launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Robert Collins <robert.collins@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:08 PM, Martin Pool <mbp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I think timelines would be a huge improvement in Launchpad: at the
> moment people basically get this in their mail inbox which is barely
> adequate.  Somebody just recently asked in another thread about adding
> notifications of the type you get on askubuntu.com etc.
>
> I think you could usefully have notifications visible in the Launchpad
> web ui and also federated out to eg Zeitgeist running on the client,
> xmpp, couch, twitter, whatever.
>
> The path to land this, it seems to me, is:
>
>  * once this thread matures, add an enhancement proposal in
> http://dev.launchpad.net/LEP
>  * regarding running zg in the datacentre - let's set the requirements
> for a federation server, then see if it fits; I'm not quite sure what
> responsibilities it would have
>  * try a spike that sends at least one kind of notification in the
> simplest way possible

I'm delighted for people to try a spike like that locally; I'm scared
of doing that in the datacentre.

I don't wish to be a wet blanket, but I think its appropriate to set
some expectations here: bringing services up to production readiness
is a necessary part of going live with /anything/ that has
performance, storage, security or privacy implications. Minimally it
needs:
 - production docs: install, troubleshooting, care and feeding
 - qa environment integration: replication to the qa environment and
resetting etc with our prod data schedule, data cleansing for ok
viewing by team leads.
 - capacity estimates to the point of 'we are comfortable'
 - load and performance estimates to the point of 'we are comfortable'
 - security analysis of new components

Adding a spike for a system that:
 - wants a new database
 - has an unknown performance profile
 - will add in-line overhead to some/most POST and many GET requests
(eventually even if not day one)

is a bit of a non-starter.

I don't see Zeitgeist as any sort of replacement for event triggering
from LP itself either, but perhaps I'm not imaginative enough : I can
definitely see Zeitgeist as a event *client* though.

-Rob