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Re: From live discussion with David Godfrey: Merge MC branch to master?



That sounds along where I was thinking myself.  My feeling in terms of
numbering is that for the most part once a minor (1.5, 1.6) release is
pushed out (ie. 1.5.0 released as such) we should be very cautious about
any new or changed features in the release.  While deciding *which*
features end up in a particular release, I think the release schedule
should be "organic" unlike it seems major companies who really like to
make major changes on a regular schedule.  Thank you for the
clarification.

Jigme Datse Yli-Rasku

On 2016-10-17 20:03, David G wrote:
> Hi Jigme,
> 
> 
> On 18/10/16 10:38, Jigme Datse Yli-Rasku wrote:
>> On 2016-10-17 17:52, David G wrote:
>>> Hi Erik,
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18/10/16 05:29, Erik Huelsmann wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Oct 17, 2016 at 8:51 PM, Yves Lavoie <..hidden..
>>>> <mailto:..hidden..>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>     Hi,
>>>>
>>>>     I'm in favor of this.
>>>>
>>>>     1- The MC should be part of LedgerSMB, not something we promote
>>>>     only on a need basis.
>>>>     2- It would get pulled in the distribution stream, contributing to
>>>>     marketing of our work. Having apt for the standard and GitHub for
>>>>     MC isn't appealing to users.
>>>>     3- We are very few, so removing burdens and freeing time to
>>>>     develop quicker should be the goal every time.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> It's great to see that is isn't meeting much resistence. However, what
>>>> about the (for now) missing data migration? It could end up being a
>>>> blocking problem to release 1.6. Do you see that as (accepted)
>>>> collateral damage?
>>>>
>>> As you mentioned, I feel that if we merge Multi Currency (MC) branch
>>> early rather than late in the 1.6 lifecycle the burden, and likely hood
>>> of it being a blocking issue, should be relatively low.
>>> We already discussed the following benefits.
>>>
>>>   * There are currently a relatively small number of systems (and likely
>>>     a small to moderate number of transactions) that will be effected by
>>>     migration issues.
>>>   * There will be an increasing number of systems and transactions that
>>>     will be effected the longer we wait.
>>>   * If we start any sort of marketing push, the number of effected
>>>     systems will hopefully grow exponentially
>>>   * Merging early allows all of the changes to receive much desired
>>>     exposure to both real world and contrived testing over a long period
>>>     of time.
>>>   * Most (probably all) devs will be able to continue with development
>>>     and testing without needing to deal with migration of data on day one.
>>>     This is due to the fact that migration will only be needed for
>>>     specific FX transactions
>>>   * If we ensure that affected (un-handled) FX transactions found during
>>>     a DB upgrade throw as errors and block the upgrade, the dev can
>>>     discuss on #ledgersmb
>>>     <https://riot.im/app/#/room/#ledgersmb:matrix.org> and we can work
>>>     out ways of migrating data transaction by transaction.
>>>     This should
>>>       o spread the burden over a period of time
>>>       o Allow us to handle actual scenarios, rather than trying to
>>>         predict *every* scenario
>>>
>>> If on the other hand we wait until later in the 1.6 life-cycle, we have
>>> a requirement for
>>>
>>>   * additional burden on the dev's (primarily Erik) to maintain the
>>>     merge synchronization of the MC branch
>>>   * a concentrated burst of testing and validation when the merge happens
>>>   * a need to rapidly resolve the migration issue rather than doing so
>>>     over a longer period of time
>>>
>>>>>     Two weeks ago, when he was in Europe, David sat down with me to
>>>>>     discuss a number of items. Some of those will come later. There
>>>>>     was one major issue we discussed though and I want to bring our
>>>>>     proposal forward here.
>>>>>
>>>>>     David put forward that having the MC (multi-currency) branch
>>>>>     merged to master gets a maintenance burden off my shoulders
>>>>>     (which it indeed will). In addition to that, merging to master
>>>>>     early provides for a (hopefully) long enough period to shake out
>>>>>     any of the problems that it may cause.
>>>>>
>>>>>     Additionally, his idea is that if this code is on master, it
>>>>>     becomes our collective problem to create a data migration
>>>>>     strategy to MC, whereas currently it's probably mostly my problem...
>>>>>
>>>>>     While I'm not very much in favor of throwing up roadblocks for
>>>>>     releases, even if they're far in the future. However, I must
>>>>>     admit that if there are others in favor of moving MC to master so
>>>>>     we have it for 1.6, getting rid of the maintenance burden
>>>>>     (however small) does seem attractive.
>> I thought that I would put a bit of what my thoughts on this are.
>>
>> I do very few transactions during a month.  I very rarely will be doing
>> multiple ones which will have foreign exchange on them, so figured I had
>> no real reason for using the MC branch myself.
>>
>> On a recent transaction which I completed, I found that I was having
>> different exchange rates being expressed in different places, on the
>> same day (on the same transaction) which meant that even though the
>> transaction all took place on the same day (and pretty close to at the
>> same time at all locations) I ended up where I was using multiple
>> exchange rates on the same day.
>>
>> This is *not* allowed in the non MC branch.  So you either need to
>> "unify" your rates, or you need to fudge your dates.
>>
>> Neither of which really express reality.  Which means that while the
>> books might "work" (and you can make a note to explain why they are
>> recorded as such) they are not self evident why they might be
>> technically incorrect.
>>
>> I personally feel that it probably is rare for any business to strictly
>> do business in a single currency.
>>
>> An issue I "discovered" while I was working on this, was the presence of
>> fractional cent values being stored (and displayed) in foreign exchange
>> transactions.  When I looked at the github issues, there was an open
>> issue expressing the exact same experience.
>>
>> The question as to *when* would be the best time to merge the MC
>> branch(s) with the "master" of the version I'm not sure when is the best
>> time.  I would say "sooner is preferable" personally, but we are
>> currently developing on 3 different version 1.4 (I understand at this
>> point pretty much bug fixes) 1.5 (currently as a RC (unless I missed
>> something)) and 1.6 (in very early development, not quite sure what to
>> call it).  I have seen evidence of development back to 1.3, and possibly
>> even 1.2 in recent months, but my understanding about that is it is
>> being done because of some client of either Chris, or Erik still running
>> those versions, so those releases are based on merging work for specific
>> clients onto those versions (where doing so is pretty much a bug fix).
>>
>> My feeling about 1.5 vs. 1.6 is that if doing the transition in 1.5 does
>> not end up meaning that releasing 1.5 gets pushed back more than a few
>> days (maybe a week) then I say we could well do it there.  We are so
>> close to releasing 1.5 as it is, that doing anything which pushes it
>> back much at all I feel is somewhat problematic in my view.
> Just a note regarding 1.5 vs 1.6 for merging Multi Currency.
> At this time, there is no plan to merge it into 1.5.
> The migration strategy is not something that is going to be resolved in
> a couple of days, or even a couple of weeks.
> Unfortunately it's a complex issue due to a variety of reasons,
> including the fact that only the "result" of certain FX transactions is
> currently retained in the database, so the original data may not be
> available in the DB to assist with the migration.
> 
> The current thought would be to merge it into 1.6, then when we believe
> there is adequate migration coverage, and 1.6 can be made otherwise
> "ready for release" we would release 1.6 as the "Multi Currency release"
> This would also include whatever other fixes and enhancements have been
> added during that cycle.
> 
> This is a slight change in release strategy from the past, in that we
> are not saying that we need lots of changes before bumping the minor
> number (1.5 > 1.6), but rather do so when a significant feature has been
> added (ie: a feature milestone)
> 
>> This is of course just personal thoughts.
>>
>> Jigme Datse Yli-Rasku
>>
> Regards
> David G
> 
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Jigme Datse Yli-Rasku
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Jigme Datse Yli-Rasku
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Canada

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