This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I find it difficult and annoying to edit the deployments page for SWAT. It's bad enough that I think it actively deters people from putting patches up for SWAT. Of course, there might be some value in having some friction if it helps prevent people from SWATing frivolous patches.

If it were possible to use VE to edit the Deployments page I think all of the pain would instantly be gone.

@Legoktm: indeed, that would be a fairly good solution. The current deployment calendar involves messy markup, I'm not sure what's involved in making VE understand it.

In T171940#3508604, @mmodell wrote:

This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. I find it difficult and annoying to edit the deployments page for SWAT. It's bad enough that I think it actively deters people from putting patches up for SWAT. Of course, there might be some value in having some friction if it helps prevent people from SWATing frivolous patches.

I'd like to subscribe that. It is annoying to have to go to one way to another, find the right section and add the patch there. There should be a more straightforward process. Why don't we use Phabricator Calendar?

As for myself, I am waiting till I've got some patches pending to add them to the SWAT window because of this. This slows the process of getting tickets closed. On the other hand it'll give other developers more time to review the code.

If we want to keep SWAT deploy schedules on Wikitech, please ease the process; or please lets discuss if we can use a Phabricator Calendar events for this.

Using Phabricator calendar would work, and I'm all for it, if I can get consensus that it's the right way to go.

Has any discussion happened about this?

My preference would be to use a system similar to the Code Review Office Hours.

why not use a system like google forms (but a open source/wikimedia maintained)

In T171940#3594906, @MarcoAurelio wrote:

Has any discussion happened about this?

My preference would be to use a system similar to the Code Review Office Hours.

Agreed, I think we could use something similar.

In T171940#3594931, @Zppix wrote:

why not use a system like google forms (but a open source/wikimedia maintained)

I looked into the PageForms extension but it seems entirely too complex. Phabricator has functionality that should be sufficient, including various forms and even a scheduling system ( phabricator calendar ). I don't see how something like google forms would really help?

In T171940#3595113, @mmodell wrote:

I looked into the PageForms extension but it seems entirely too complex. Phabricator has functionality that should be sufficient, including various forms and even a scheduling system ( phabricator calendar ). I don't see how something like google forms would really help?

Ok then i vote for the phab route

Proof of concept using TemplateData: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/Deployments_sandbox.

Thoughts?

In T171940#4959789, @Krinkle wrote:

Proof of concept using TemplateData: https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Krinkle/Deployments_sandbox.

Thoughts?

I like it! I wanted to try something like that but I never could find the documentation for how to do it :(

So while I was doing SWAT last night, I had a bit of inspiration:

Gerrit has hashtags now.
If we define a convention for swat hashtags we can easily nominate a back-port for SWAT by simply adding a hashtag that follows a convention such as (for example) #swat-20190307-1 to add the patch to the early morning SWAT tomorrow (march 6th, 1st swat window) .. The convention would be #swat-YYYYMMDD-n where n is the swat window either morning, midday or evening. It could be 1, 2, 3 for the 3 swat windows or it could be the word morning, midday, evening. That part doesn't really matter.

So by simply adding the correct hashtag it would enable us to query gerrit and find a list of patches which could then be incorporated into the deployments wikipage by a bit of custom lua in the deployment-slot template.

This would also allow us to easily automate the scap commands - scap swat could query gerrit to get a list of patches which we can then merge and pull in a semi-automatic process with just a couple of prompts for the developer and the deployer to confirm that everything is good to go after testing on mwdebug, etc.

I don't really feel comfortable putting config changes on full-auto but I think that this gets us well on our way to fully automating the deployment process for back-ports.