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Open Hour Agendas and Notes: 2020 10

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Open Hour meeting videos are available on YouTube. Starting with the August 20, 2020 video, there are timestamps to mark where each topic discussion begins.

2020-10-22 Open Hour Agenda

YouTube Video PDF of Slide Deck

  • General updates a.k.a housekeeping
  • Docs Clinic today
  • SaltConf 20 Virtual
  • Existing SEPs
  • Discussion and Q&A

Notes

Salt news, updates, and SaltConf 20 Virtual

Magnesium release 3002 is live!

SaltStack is giving more access in GitHub: Outside Contributors

  • Changing Members to Outside Contributors
  • Private repos save your forks
  • ~2 weeks after 2020-NOV-05
  • Questions: Contact Sage Robins [email protected] on Community Slack/keybase/element sagetherage

The Documentation Group, and Docs Clinics

  • Docs clinic later today: Git for the True Beginner, held by Alyssa Rock
  • Weekly docs working group rotates with Docs Clinic
  • SaltConf20 on Thursday means that there is no Documentation Working Group or Docs Clinic!
  • Checkout the SaltStack Documentation playlist on YouTube

SaltConf20

SaltConf20 Virtually Everywhere will be the 7th annual SaltStack user conference. This event will be accessible globally on our virtual platform on October 29, 2020 from 9am to 6pm U.S. Mountain Time.

  • Fully virtual, attendance is free
  • Register for SaltConf20 here!
  • Checkout the SaltConf20 Agenda here!
  • We'll be having some special guests from VMware, and also an appearance from one of the co-creators of Kubernetes: Joe Beda!
  • Thomas Hatch will be giving several presentations during this multi-track conference
  • All presentations will be recorded, and will be available for view after the conference

Don't forget, anyone can also access content from SaltConf19, too!

Existing SEPs

All PRs in the SEPs repo represent open discussions on Salt Enhancement Proposals.

Open community discussion & questions

The rest of the open hour was dedicated to Q&A.

Windows issue: Getting no response from minions

When creating a series of calls against Windows systems, and converting commands over into execution modules, there seems to be a problem with using the file execution module calls.

file.copy seems to work, but file.get_hash seems to either never respond or not work.

Adding -t 30 to the salt command can increase the Windows timeout, but also the salt minion configuration has an option for extending timeout of a minion by default.

Working with salt-api and timeouts:

Timeout customization

Often, Windows salt minions need an extended timeout added to their calls in order to properly retrieve the results from a salt-minion.

# Run pkg.refresh_db against Windows salt minions,
#  but increase the timeout in order to see the response
salt -v -G 'os:Windows' pkg.refresh_db -t 100

When using the salt-api, using timeout in an example (as seen in the rest_cherrpy / salt-api docs):

{
	"client": "local",
	"tgt": "*",
	"fun": "test.sleep",
	"kwarg": {"length": 30},
	"timeout": 60
}

This can also be set within the master configuration, which will increase the default timeout value for calls made against all minions. Minions will still immediately send their responses as usual, but additional minion responses that previously may have never returned (due to too short a timeout) will have more time to respond.

# Set the default timeout for the salt command and api (in seconds)
# Default: 5
timeout: 30

For more help:

Where should people open issues related to salt packages?

Current guidance is to open issues within the main salt repository, and triage will take care of whether issues need to also be moved or opened elsewhere, such as in salt-pkg. This includes issues experienced as a result of trying out the new, beta tiamat-builds of salt:

  • salt-pkg repo, which contains directions on installing/testing Tiamat builds

Wow, there are a ton of PRs and issues open on GitHub! What's up with that?

Salt is a very large community, and with it comes a large amount of contributions in the form of PRs and in the form of issues/tickets.

We have been using code jams to bring down the PR count, with many of the PRs being related to ports from other branches (mostly develop). We are looking at having another code jam and docs jam during the next release cycle.

Many PRs do not have tests, or are failing existing tests (related to pre-commit other existing tests in the test suite). All contributions and help are welcome!

Salt's test suite guidance:

Also a good read: SaltStack Blog: PyTest - A Journey of Three Years

Working groups, community calendar, and general community

Checkout the SaltStack community Google calendar for upcoming events and streams.

Do you want to get more involved in salt and the SaltStack community? Get involved:

Archive extracting execution and state module

What should someone use to replace an existing state? For example, if wanting to replace functions within the salt.states.archive module?

The best way to go about it is to submit a PR:

Follow-up question: What about idem tools, and new state/execution modules?

The current plan is that POP projects are made for brand-new modules and functionality, with salt being able to make calls to idem projects if wanting to extend salt to support them.

Current modules already existing within salt aren't going to be extracted/replaced unless several preliminary steps and decisions are made, as we do not want to break existing Salt states. The decisions around this have yet to be made.

If wanting to use salt-cloud, though, it is highly suggested that people make use of idem-cloud packages instead due to active development:

POP projects

Outside of salt, SaltStack also open-sourced a new way of creating Python-packages via Plugin Oriented Programming (POP). New execution modules and states that currently don't exist within the salt project may find a better home as newly created idem projects.

POP links:

Tiamat and Salt SEP

Because Tiamat packages its own version of isolated Python and pip, it means that the functionality around pip packages install calls from Salt will have changed default behavior. An execution or state module call to install Python packages from pip would need to specify the system-level Python/pip if it wants to install packages that become available to system-level/third-party Python tools and applications outside of salt.

Pedro will be responding to questions, comments, and concerns around this in the SEP on Tiamat packaging for Salt.

2020-10-15 DRAFT

Agenda

  • SaltConf 20 Virtual Event
  • Community Champion Nominations
  • Release Candidate (RC) for Magnesium
  • GA Release next Wed 2020-10-21
  • Point Release in Nov
  • SEPs

Meeting Notes

SaltConf 20 Virtual Event

  • Thursday 2020-10-29
  • To register and see details: saltconf
  • Focused on the Community specifically
  • Individual Networking, virtual booths
  • Nominate Community Champion
  • Top Contributor will also be announced

Release Candidate (RC) for Magnesium

SEPs

  • Reviewed open SEP titles here
  • Process needs iteration such as assigning each SEP a champion or a lead to help see them through to completion, this can be more than the Core Team, Community Members welcome!
  • We are attempting to have all the communication within the SEPs, but of course we want to bring them up in the Open Hour meetings because this is a place to ask questions, have discussions, so looking to keep this agenda item each week.
  • Greeting Bot was added to the SEP repo
    • Need to continue to iterate on that message and other automation (in general)
  • Community Advisory Board is very exciting and needs shepherding, looking forward to this and making this real
    • Sage's task to follow up on the comments that need to be addressed and find an assignee to champion this SEP

SEP 26

  • Title: Package Salt with Tiamat
  • Specifically Comment #34
  • Conversation during the meeting 2 different items or things here
    • extending salt to load more modules into a salt environment to pick it up - recently available in v7.3
    • pip install into the system - not yet addressed as of these notes (Comment #34) need to fix on the salt side, default to the python environment on the system and will be addressed for the Magnesium release or the following point release (correction at the time of the original notes the Core team attempted to correct for the Mg release, and more work will continue for the Mg point release in November)
  • README for beta tiamat packages of Salt

More General Notes mentioned throughout the meeting

  • During this transition Janae Andrus and Sage Robins are you main contacts, please reach out to us!
  • Planning coming up for Aluminium: not set date yet, but will communicate once known (Sage)
  • Magnesium Community Retrospective
    • Date is TBD will be during the Open Hour time slot, will be scheduled soon and communicated

2020-10-08

  • Salt news, updates, and SaltConf 20 Virtual
  • Docs Jam recap
  • VMWare's acquisition of SaltStack
  • Salt Enhancement Proposals: SEP 25: Add runtime registers to Salt, SEP 26: Package Salt with Tiamat, SEP 27: Create a Community Advisory Board
  • New New SEP 28: Add inclusive language
  • Open community discussion & questions

Salt News and updates

Community Manager Cassandra Faris

  • SaltConf 20 is October 29. Registration is open.
  • The core team has focused on Tiamat testing, bug fixes, and preparing for Magnesium RC. Code freeze was September 29, but there was a delay in the RC due to some test issues. The RC will be out on or before October 13. From a community standpoint, the focus has been the Docs Jam and Advisory Board SEP.

Docs Jam recap

Community Manager Cassandra Faris and SaltStack Technical Writer Alyssa Rock
Discussion begins at 1:30 on the video

  • Due to community feedback to improve documentation, we set aside a day for people to come together and work on docs.
  • Highlights
    • Ken Crowell and Derek Ardolf completed module documentation fixes.
    • One new contributor joined us.
    • Ongoing side conversations discussed how everyone in tech is learning all the time and no one has to be an expert to contribute to Open Source. Keynoter Erin McKean of Google reiterated the importance of learning and openness of the community during her talk.
    • Alyssa opened a PR for a new topic that gives a highlight that overviews all Salt system architecture. She worked with Gareth and Shane to create a diagram. This was the first time she was able to successfully contribute a PR to Salt Open Docs.

VMWare's acquisition of Salt

SaltStack CTO Tom Hatch
Discussion begins at 5:20 on the video

  • The October 1 Open Hour was exclusively dedicated to the VMWare acquisition. The video and notes are available for review.
  • If there are additional questions, reach out to the team.

Existing SEPs: SEP 25: Add runtime registers to Salt, SEP 26: Package Salt with Tiamat, SEP 27: Create a Community Advisory Board

Community Manager Cassandra Faris
Discussion begins at 6:10 on the video

  • The next step for SEP 25 is to contact the creator and clarify whether he has more to add. He'd stated that the SEP he submitted was a draft.
  • The next step for SEP 26 is likely to close it within the next week or so. It will need to be completed by the Magnesium release.
  • The next step for SEP 27 is to make some formatting changes to the SEP. Since it's a change in governance, it's on hold until the VMWare acquisition is finalized.

New SEP 28: Add inclusive language

Community Manager Cassandra Faris
Discussion begins at 8:50 on the video

  • Link to SEP: https://github.com/saltstack/salt-enhancement-proposals/pull/37
  • There has been conversation about removing problematic terms such as master, whitelist, and blacklist. This is something Salt has been looking at. VMWare has taken a stance on this, so the decision will be deferred to them.
  • We don't want offensive language in the software and are exploring changing blacklist and whitelist to blocklist and allowlist. The change has to be made in a way that doesn't include bugs.
  • Minion and master were initially chosen because, at the time Tom created Salt, Master wasn't considered offensive.
  • Changing Master cannot be easily changed and could create significant potential issues within the product.
  • The changes will need to follow a deprecation path to minimize risk of introducing bugs and usability issues.

2020-10-01

  • Salt news, updates, Docs Jam, and SaltConf
  • Special update: VMWare's acquisition of SaltStack - discussion led by Thomas Hatch. Please send Cassandra Faris your acquisition questions. Tom, Cassandra, and the rest of the Core Team would like to get as many of them answered for you as possible.
  • Open community discussion & questions

Salt News and updates

Community Manager Cassandra Faris

VMWare's acquisition of SaltStack

SaltStack Founder/CTO, Tom Hatch and SaltStack SVP of Engineering, Moe Anderson
Discussion begins at 5:42 on the video

Thank you to SaltStack Senior Software Engineer for creating these notes in realtime

Opening remarks and background

  • Cassandra: I've compiled a list our community's frequently asked questions and common topics of conversation. We'll start by addressing the questions and topics from that list.
  • Moe: this is a journey - not an end
  • Tom: SaltStack has come up for acquisition multiple times. He's only been willing to consider acquisition if he felt confident that salt open would be maintained. VMWare has made significant comments & commitments about maintaining and improving open source support
  • Tom: can't answer everything, but the future looks bright - no license changes re: Salt Open. I want to express my sincere thanks & gratitude to this community. When he started Salt in his basement, years ago, he couldn't have imagined where we would be today.
  • Tom: Will continue on with VMWare - will actually be more involved with Salt, since he won't have to focus as much on keeping the business going and doing other executive things. plans to work on improving more communication within the community. Salt Hacks has been going, wants to improve the cadence for Salt Air as well
  • Tom: my confidence right now in VMWare is very high. Was skeptical & worried in the beginning, but has become deeply impressed over the course of this process. "My fears were quickly calmed"
  • Moe: echoes Tom's sentiment than there is strong and evident commitments from VMWare to Open Source. They've brought in a lot of champions for Open Source

Questions and Answers

  • Q: What changes will impact contributors?
    • Moe: we are gaining a great partner in VMWare on this journey
    • Tom: No intention to make any changes around community contributors - GitHub, PRs, issues, SEP process
    • Moe: Only changes to improve the process!
    • Tom: Not planning to diminish current contributions to merge process
  • Q: Any changes to platform/tooling?
    • Tom: We're already working to improve things, we've moved a lot of internal Salt things to GitLab, but Salt currently will stay on GitHub. Also, VMWare maintains OS projects on GitHub, so we probably won't be moving
  • Q: License changes?
    • Tom: VMWare likes the apache license - we might tidy a few things up, but shouldn't be any significant changes
  • Q: Relationship between open and enterprise?
    • Tom: Open Core - when we take an open project and create an enterprise project that hamstrings the open project. Salt does not do that. Our enterprise product is a separate codebase. There's no innovation stifling going on.
    • Tom: There's no "community edition" - there's Salt. There's a trial edition of SaltStack Enterprise, but that's a distinct product.
  • Q: Did VMWare commit to adding resources to the open/core team? Tom: SaltStack already commits way more resources than many other projects. VMWare has committed to continue to support & maintain the OS project - Moe: Trends that have occurred in the past will likely continue to occur in the future. Shouldn't be interpreted as a commitment, but there are a wealth of Salt users at VMWare, VMWare partners that will likely come to contribute to Salt, etc. etc. - Moe: it's reasonable to expect additional enthusiasm into the community
  • Q: Do we need to create forks?!
    • Tom: heavens no - we'll still be releasing Salt, continue to march forward
  • Q: What's the future of pop/idem - other R&D efforts? - Tom: VMWare has expressed strong interest and support in continuing R&D efforts
  • Q: Is Tom just going to go off into POP-land?
    • Tom: I've been in POP-land - I'm finally going to get more back into Salt-land :D
  • Q: Does VMWare still hold an investment in puppet?
    • Tom: There are certain aspects around the VMWare that I cannot make, Clearly VMWare is significantly interested in SaltStack, so...
    • Tom: Also VMWare will still integrate with all of the things that they've integrated with before
  • Q: Will salt stand alone or get embedded into something else?
    • Tom: VMWare is currently still planning on releasing Salt as usual. But there is strong interest in more tightly integrating Salt into certain VMWare products. But Salt will still be available as Salt.
    • Tom: only so much I can answer right now, and others... probably never? Unless VMWare makes some sort of announcement?
  • Q: Why did SaltStack decide to sell the company? - Tom: there are many factors that go into selling a company. Many things I can't comment on right now. These processes take months and months, involve many financial discussions. Why I feel this is a good move is that Salt is much more powerful and more broad, and I feel that VMWare is capable of taking advantage of this and accelerating. I am fully on board with this decision, and will own that. - Tom: I feel this is the best thing for Salt, the Enterprise project, and especially the community
  • Q: Is this the death of SaltStack? - Tom: Hopefully previous answers have clarified "no" - VMWare still committed, etc.
  • Q: Are stickers going to be boring? - Moe: Janae's (SaltStack Marketing) is on the phone, and... no! They're going to be better than ever. - Janae: The stickers are going to be phenomenal - we wouldn't let them be boring.
  • Q: When will licensing changes, if any, be announced? - Alex: re: licensing - we hope to have a lot of announcements at SaltConf - go register! (again, premature to say anything, as it's not a closed deal yet)
  • Q: SSE still be available? - Tom: Yes! SSE, SecOps Comply and Protect will both be available - Alex: Not only available, but we are still executing on our existing roadmap - Moe: No changes to SecOps (maybe asked relative to VMWare Carbon Black)
  • Q: Process improvements?
    • Moe: We've been improving a lot of the test suites - reduced time (9+h to <3h), working more for reductions. - Moe: We've also been working on more process automation, and other improvements - folks on the core team, community members like Max, Mike, Kirill, Erik...

Closing Remarks

  • Tom: This has been a big week for us. In 2011 I made a commitment that I stand by Open Source. I firmly believe that VMWare will continue to support Salt.
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