As an initial step of our technical debt and code health efforts, we need to identify orphaned code and decided what to do with it.
Options include:
Cleaning this up will enable us to either reduce the scope of the work or engage the correct folks to get work done.
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Invalid | None | T174087 FY2017/18 Program 3: Addressing technical debt | |||
| Resolved | Jrbranaa | T174088 FY2017/18 Program 3 Outcome 1: The amount of orphaned code that is running Wikimedia “production” services is reduced. | |||
| Resolved | Jrbranaa | T174091 FY2017/18 Program 3 Outcome 1 Objective 2: Identify and find stewards for high-priority/high use code segment orphans | |||
| Resolved | Jrbranaa | T173349 Identify Orphaned components/code |
Have received a fair bit of feedback/recommendations on some of the orphaned components. Will be updating the Developers/Maintainers page with those that are straight forward, and seeking additional clarification on those that aren't.
@Jrbranaa: I am curious and I'd like to have more context.
Also because we have some stats on https://wikimedia.biterg.io/ (which might not help with this at all, but to judge I'd need to better understand).
Where to find criteria for and/or a list of "the orphaned components"?
Where to find out about the scope? Areas in MediaWiki core? Any repositories in Wikimedia Git/Gerrit? Also Wikimedia repositories on GitHub? Something else?
@Aklapper at this point the scope is what's listed at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Developers/Maintainers. However this is the time to expand (or contract) as necessary.
Orphaned will essentially be all components that don't have a responsible team within the Foundation or sister chapter.
Hmm, that would mean that components being maintained by dedicated active volunteers or by 3rd party companies would still be called "orphaned" which feels slightly misleading to me (but I might be discussing a theoretical situation here).
Yeah, that's a good point. One of the thoughts that I've been having is to recognize "stewardship" outside of the foundation and sister orgs. Meaning, anyone can agree to be a steward provided they are willing and capable of being a steward as defined (whatever that ends up looking like).
I think the term "orphaned" only carries any real importance within the Foundation. If something is deployed to our production environments, something that is orphaned carries a risk that the foundation may not want to accept, so it'll either get covered through funded stewardship or removed from the production environment (sunsetted). At least that's the intent.
Actually, this is done (the holes in the [[dev/maint]] page, the parent task is blocked by the conversation.