Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Alex Petrov]

> ACCORD in particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone 
> cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite --so we need to ask 
> ourselves how people who go on stage as Cassandra experts are not aware that 
> it could slip.

I re-watched the New Orleans talks on Accord and TCM, and could not find 
anything that would point to "quite the opposite" end. I did find one talk on 
Accord from 2021 which does give a somewhat optimistic timeline, but I also 
believe this was later abundantly clarified. If the presentation was given by 
the people not working directly on either one of the features, maybe it's worth 
to caution them about optimistic promises. But, given the breadth and depth of 
both features, it is always best to err on the side of stability and 
correctness.

On Sat, Oct 28, 2023, at 3:38 PM, Josh McKenzie wrote:
>> ACCORD in particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone 
>> cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite
> We need to be very careful in the future about how we communicate the 
> availability of future novel work, especially when the ones promoting the 
> delivery of that work and timelines aren't the ones actively working on the 
> code. And to be explicit - I don't think there's any bad actors here; I think 
> this is a natural consequence of specialization of skills and focus in the 
> community as well as disjoint between different groups of people.
> 
> Also, it's become clear to me that we still weren't all in alignment on our 
> view of "do we ship 5.0 based on a date or do we ship 5.0 based on feature 
> availability". Since we're still going through some evolution in our release 
> philosophy (train vs. feature, etc), this is to be expected. We're getting 
> there.
> 
> Having a marketing working group has helped bridge this gap, and getting more 
> participation from other people in the community on that effort would help 
> align more of us.
> 
> 
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, at 5:00 PM, German Eichberger via dev wrote:
>> Definitely want to second Josh. When I reached out on the ACCORD channel 
>> about testing folks were super helpful and transparent about bugs, etc.
>> 
>> Frankly, I was pretty frustrated that ACCORD+TCM slipped. I was looking 
>> forward to it and felt let down - but I also haven't done anything to help 
>> other than trying it out. So, I only have myself to blame... 
>> 
>> That there was a surprise for many of us that it slipped is an indication 
>> there wasn't enough communication - we should probably rethink how we 
>> communicate progress, especially on long running and highly anticipated 
>> initiatives. Maybe a paragraph in the "Project Status Update" (but then we 
>> need more frequent updates 🙂) -- or send a separate update e-mail or as 
>> Maxim is suggesting to some newly created release list. 
>> 
>> A highly anticipated feature has more visibility and we need to account for 
>> that with more communication other than the usual channels. ACCORD in 
>> particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone cautioned 
>> it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite --so we need to ask ourselves how 
>> people who go on stage as Cassandra experts are not aware that it could 
>> slip. That's where I think more communication could help -- 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> German
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> *From:* Josh McKenzie 
>> *Sent:* Friday, October 27, 2023 10:13 AM
>> *To:* dev 
>> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL] Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and 
>> cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)
>>  
>> Lots of threads of thought have popped up here. The big one I feel needs to 
>> be clearly addressed and inspected is the implication of development not 
>> happening transparently and not being inclusive or available for 
>> participation by the community on major features.
>> 
>> The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public 
>> JIRA's + feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM 
>> and Accord are the most transparent this kind of development has *ever been* 
>> on this project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where the 
>> degree of reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to not 
>> just hit diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small group of 
>> peoples' ability to make rapid progress on something.
>> 
>> No-one can expect to review everything, and no-one can expect to follow 
>> every JIRA, commit, or update. This is why we have the role of a committer; 
>> a person in this community we've publicly communicated we trust based on 
>> earned merit (and in our project's case, at least 2 people who's opinion we 
>> trust) to do quality work, validate it, and reach our expected bar for 
>> correctness, performance, and maintainability. If a CEP is voted in and 2 
>> committers have an implementation they feel meets the goals, CI is green, 
>> and nobody has a serious technical concern that warrants a binding -1, we

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Benjamin Lerer]

>
> The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public
> JIRA's + feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM
> and Accord are the most transparent this kind of development has *ever
> been* on this project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past
> where the degree of reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts
> to not just hit diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small
> group of peoples' ability to make rapid progress on something.


I feel that there are several misunderstanding going on. When I am talking
about visibility, I am not talking specifically of Accord or TCM. I just do
not believe that we are doing a good job generally in term of visibility,
me included.
When I talk about visibility, I am also not talking about how a feature is
supposed to work or its internals. I think that a really good job was made
on that front.

By visibility, what I am referring to is progress visibility. A lot of
features have been pushed in the project at an advanced state or near
complete state. There are sometime good reasons for it as the feature might
have already been existing somewhere in a fork for quite some time already.
The issue with that approach is that it makes thing hard to anticipate and
usually take everybody not involved by surprise. This make it hard for us
as a community to organize ourselves.
The project is changing and there are more and more dependencies between
features/improvements. We had the case this time with Java 17 support being
needed for Accord and ANN, with ANN being build on top of SAI and Accord on
top of TCM.
I expect more and more dependencies coming in the future. Getting a reviews
in a reasonable time frame is also valuable and those are easier to have if
people can anticipate what is coming.

I want to apologize if people took what I said about visibility before as a
criticism. It was not. Our plan for 5.0 were pretty ambitious and I really
appreciate that. I have never seen Cassandra evolve so much in a given
release. The CEP process and the discussions surrounding the CEP gave a lot
of inside on the features and have helped a lot on the communication side,
creating new expectations. This release simply highlighted another problem
that I was not perceiving in the past and on which I think we should
improve as a community.


Le sam. 28 oct. 2023 à 15:40, Josh McKenzie  a écrit :

> ACCORD in particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and
> noone cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite
>
> We need to be very careful in the future about how we communicate the
> availability of future novel work, especially when the ones promoting the
> delivery of that work and timelines aren't the ones actively working on the
> code. And to be explicit - I don't think there's any bad actors here; I
> think this is a natural consequence of specialization of skills and focus
> in the community as well as disjoint between different groups of people.
>
> Also, it's become clear to me that we still weren't all in alignment on
> our view of "do we ship 5.0 based on a date or do we ship 5.0 based on
> feature availability". Since we're still going through some evolution in
> our release philosophy (train vs. feature, etc), this is to be expected.
> We're getting there.
>
> Having a marketing working group has helped bridge this gap, and getting
> more participation from other people in the community on that effort would
> help align more of us.
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, at 5:00 PM, German Eichberger via dev wrote:
>
> Definitely want to second Josh. When I reached out on the ACCORD channel
> about testing folks were super helpful and transparent about bugs, etc.
>
> Frankly, I was pretty frustrated that ACCORD+TCM slipped. I was looking
> forward to it and felt let down - but I also haven't done anything to help
> other than trying it out. So, I only have myself to blame...
>
> That there was a surprise for many of us that it slipped is an indication
> there wasn't enough communication - we should probably rethink how we
> communicate progress, especially on long running and highly anticipated
> initiatives. Maybe a paragraph in the "Project Status Update" (but then we
> need more frequent updates 🙂) -- or send a separate update e-mail or as
> Maxim is suggesting to some newly created release list.
>
> A highly anticipated feature has more visibility and we need to account
> for that with more communication other than the usual channels. ACCORD in
> particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone
> cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite --so we need to ask
> ourselves how people who go on stage as Cassandra experts are not aware
> that it could slip. That's where I think more communication could help --
>
>
> Thanks,
> German
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *From:* Josh McKenzie 
> *Sent:* Friday, October 27, 2023 10:13 AM
> *To:* dev 
> *Subject:* [EXTERNAL

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Benedict]

nit: accord had no dependency on java17, it just wanted to drop support for java8 to make development easier due to bugs in the compiler. For some reason this got bundled into the work to support java17, but this was a false dependencyRegarding visibility, there’s a limit to how much time can be spent doing project management type activities without adversely impacting work, and no doubt everyone working on the project already has multiple internal activities of this kind. Personally I find these activities very distracting, and to cause a disproportionate loss of productivity. Since my work has been done in the open for years now, and anyone can take a peek or simply ask how things are going, I don’t really anticipate endorsing additional regular reporting requirements at the project level. Even for work done in private, I don’t anticipate supporting extra reporting burden, though this might reasonably lead to a delay between publication and merging as folk catch up with everything that has happened.Perhaps we should simply reconsider the idea of promoting specific releases for work that hasn’t yet completed.On 30 Oct 2023, at 09:46, Benjamin Lerer  wrote:
The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public 
JIRA's + feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically 
TCM and Accord are the most transparent this kind of development has ever been
 on this project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where 
the degree of reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to
 not just hit diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small 
group of peoples' ability to make rapid progress on something.

I feel that there are several misunderstanding going on. When I am talking about visibility, I am not talking specifically of Accord or TCM. I just do not believe that we are doing a good job generally in term of visibility, me included.When I talk about visibility, I am also not talking about how a feature is supposed to work or its internals. I think that a really good job was made on that front.By visibility, what I am referring to is progress visibility. A lot of features have been pushed in the project at an advanced state or near complete state. There are sometime good reasons for it as the feature might have already been existing somewhere in a fork for quite some time already. The issue with that approach is that it makes thing hard to anticipate and usually take everybody not involved by surprise. This make it hard for us as a community to organize ourselves.The project is changing and there are more and more dependencies between features/improvements. We had the case this time with Java 17 support being needed for Accord and ANN, with ANN being build on top of SAI and Accord on top of TCM.I expect more and more dependencies coming in the future. Getting a reviews in a reasonable time frame is also valuable and those are easier to have if people can anticipate what is coming. I want to apologize if people took what I said about visibility before as a criticism. It was not. Our plan for 5.0 were pretty ambitious and I really appreciate that. I have never seen Cassandra evolve so much in a given release. The CEP process and the discussions surrounding the CEP gave a lot of inside on the features and have helped a lot on the communication side, creating new expectations. This release simply highlighted another problem that I was not perceiving in the past and on which I think we should improve as a community.   Le sam. 28 oct. 2023 à 15:40, Josh McKenzie  a écrit :ACCORD in particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the oppositeWe need to be very careful in the future about how we communicate the availability of future novel work, especially when the ones promoting the delivery of that work and timelines aren't the ones actively working on the code. And to be explicit - I don't think there's any bad actors here; I think this is a natural consequence of specialization of skills and focus in the community as well as disjoint between different groups of people.Also, it's become clear to me that we still weren't all in alignment on our view of "do we ship 5.0 based on a date or do we ship 5.0 based on feature availability". Since we're still going through some evolution in our release philosophy (train vs. feature, etc), this is to be expected. We're getting there.Having a marketing working group has helped bridge this gap, and getting more participation from other people in the community on that effort would help align more of us.On Fri, Oct 27, 2023, at 5:00 PM, German Eichberger via dev wrote:Definitely want to second Josh. When I reached out on the ACCORD channel about testing folks were super helpful and transparent about bugs, etc.Frankly, I was pretty frustrated that ACCORD+TCM slipped. I was looking forward to it and felt let down - but I also haven't done anything to

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Miklosovic, Stefan via dev]

I could not agree more with what Benjamin just wrote.

It is truly more about the visibility of the progress. If one looks at this 
(1), well, that seems like a pretty much finished epic, isn't it? If we make ML 
and Jira the only official sources of the truth, then there is no mentioning 
whatoever that there is any delay (or really, just point me to something which 
tells the opposite and I will gladly eat my humble pie).

I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in "New 
Orleans" to do with it. Does it mean that only people who are going to New 
Orleans are about to learn what the actual progress is? I just read the ML and 
Jira tickets.

It is questionable how to track this, maybe a commiter's digest would serve the 
role just perfectly as Maxim suggested. Josh's summaries are also super nice to 
use for this. I always find it helpful to see the overall picture and I can not 
thank Josh enough for writing it down. He always spices it up with his own 
writing style which I find engaging but that is just an observation.

(1) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-18330

Regards


From: Benjamin Lerer 
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 10:45
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 
5.1-alpha1)

NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or open 
attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.



The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public JIRA's + 
feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM and Accord 
are the most transparent this kind of development has ever been on this 
project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where the degree of 
reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to not just hit 
diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small group of peoples' 
ability to make rapid progress on something.

I feel that there are several misunderstanding going on. When I am talking 
about visibility, I am not talking specifically of Accord or TCM. I just do not 
believe that we are doing a good job generally in term of visibility, me 
included.
When I talk about visibility, I am also not talking about how a feature is 
supposed to work or its internals. I think that a really good job was made on 
that front.

By visibility, what I am referring to is progress visibility. A lot of features 
have been pushed in the project at an advanced state or near complete state. 
There are sometime good reasons for it as the feature might have already been 
existing somewhere in a fork for quite some time already. The issue with that 
approach is that it makes thing hard to anticipate and usually take everybody 
not involved by surprise. This make it hard for us as a community to organize 
ourselves.
The project is changing and there are more and more dependencies between 
features/improvements. We had the case this time with Java 17 support being 
needed for Accord and ANN, with ANN being build on top of SAI and Accord on top 
of TCM.
I expect more and more dependencies coming in the future. Getting a reviews in 
a reasonable time frame is also valuable and those are easier to have if people 
can anticipate what is coming.

I want to apologize if people took what I said about visibility before as a 
criticism. It was not. Our plan for 5.0 were pretty ambitious and I really 
appreciate that. I have never seen Cassandra evolve so much in a given release. 
The CEP process and the discussions surrounding the CEP gave a lot of inside on 
the features and have helped a lot on the communication side, creating new 
expectations. This release simply highlighted another problem that I was not 
perceiving in the past and on which I think we should improve as a community.


Le sam. 28 oct. 2023 à 15:40, Josh McKenzie 
mailto:jmcken...@apache.org>> a écrit :
ACCORD in particular was hyped in numerous talks and presentations and noone 
cautioned it might not hit 5.0, quite the opposite
We need to be very careful in the future about how we communicate the 
availability of future novel work, especially when the ones promoting the 
delivery of that work and timelines aren't the ones actively working on the 
code. And to be explicit - I don't think there's any bad actors here; I think 
this is a natural consequence of specialization of skills and focus in the 
community as well as disjoint between different groups of people.

Also, it's become clear to me that we still weren't all in alignment on our 
view of "do we ship 5.0 based on a date or do we ship 5.0 based on feature 
availability". Since we're still going through some evolution in our release 
philosophy (train vs. feature, etc), this is to be expected. We're getting 
there.

Having a marketing working group has helped bridge this gap, and getting more 
participation from other people in the community on t

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Alex Petrov]

> I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in "New 
> Orleans" to do with it.

Stefan, please make sure to read the context, and re-read my message, since it 
seems like you have completely misinterpreted it. My message states clearly 
that I was responding to someone saying that there were talks that mentioned 
some seemingly misleading timelines. I have checked the talks by the people who 
were involved in the feature development and found no trace of that. So not 
only have I not said that someone should have been in New Orleans to be aware 
of the status, I have also said that there was nothing said in those talks 
about the timelines that could have mislead anyone who did happen to be in New 
Orleans to hear that.


On Mon, Oct 30, 2023, at 11:28 AM, Miklosovic, Stefan via dev wrote:
> I could not agree more with what Benjamin just wrote.
> 
> It is truly more about the visibility of the progress. If one looks at this 
> (1), well, that seems like a pretty much finished epic, isn't it? If we make 
> ML and Jira the only official sources of the truth, then there is no 
> mentioning whatoever that there is any delay (or really, just point me to 
> something which tells the opposite and I will gladly eat my humble pie).
> 
> I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in "New 
> Orleans" to do with it. Does it mean that only people who are going to New 
> Orleans are about to learn what the actual progress is? I just read the ML 
> and Jira tickets.
> 
> It is questionable how to track this, maybe a commiter's digest would serve 
> the role just perfectly as Maxim suggested. Josh's summaries are also super 
> nice to use for this. I always find it helpful to see the overall picture and 
> I can not thank Josh enough for writing it down. He always spices it up with 
> his own writing style which I find engaging but that is just an observation.
> 
> (1) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-18330
> 
> Regards
> 
> 
> From: Benjamin Lerer 
> Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 10:45
> To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an 
> immediate 5.1-alpha1)
> 
> NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or 
> open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.
> 
> 
> 
> The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public JIRA's 
> + feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM and 
> Accord are the most transparent this kind of development has ever been on 
> this project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where the degree 
> of reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to not just hit 
> diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small group of peoples' 
> ability to make rapid progress on something.
> 
> I feel that there are several misunderstanding going on. When I am talking 
> about visibility, I am not talking specifically of Accord or TCM. I just do 
> not believe that we are doing a good job generally in term of visibility, me 
> included.
> When I talk about visibility, I am also not talking about how a feature is 
> supposed to work or its internals. I think that a really good job was made on 
> that front.
> 
> By visibility, what I am referring to is progress visibility. A lot of 
> features have been pushed in the project at an advanced state or near 
> complete state. There are sometime good reasons for it as the feature might 
> have already been existing somewhere in a fork for quite some time already. 
> The issue with that approach is that it makes thing hard to anticipate and 
> usually take everybody not involved by surprise. This make it hard for us as 
> a community to organize ourselves.
> The project is changing and there are more and more dependencies between 
> features/improvements. We had the case this time with Java 17 support being 
> needed for Accord and ANN, with ANN being build on top of SAI and Accord on 
> top of TCM.
> I expect more and more dependencies coming in the future. Getting a reviews 
> in a reasonable time frame is also valuable and those are easier to have if 
> people can anticipate what is coming.
> 
> I want to apologize if people took what I said about visibility before as a 
> criticism. It was not. Our plan for 5.0 were pretty ambitious and I really 
> appreciate that. I have never seen Cassandra evolve so much in a given 
> release. The CEP process and the discussions surrounding the CEP gave a lot 
> of inside on the features and have helped a lot on the communication side, 
> creating new expectations. This release simply highlighted another problem 
> that I was not perceiving in the past and on which I think we should improve 
> as a community.
> 
> 
> Le sam. 28 oct. 2023 à 15:40, Josh McKenzie 
> mailto:jmcken...@apache.org>> a écrit :
> ACCORD in particular was hyped in n

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Miklosovic, Stefan via dev]

OK fair enough, I am taking that part back.


From: Alex Petrov 
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 11:45
To: dev
Cc: Miklosovic, Stefan
Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 
5.1-alpha1)

NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or open 
attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.



> I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in "New 
> Orleans" to do with it.

Stefan, please make sure to read the context, and re-read my message, since it 
seems like you have completely misinterpreted it. My message states clearly 
that I was responding to someone saying that there were talks that mentioned 
some seemingly misleading timelines. I have checked the talks by the people who 
were involved in the feature development and found no trace of that. So not 
only have I not said that someone should have been in New Orleans to be aware 
of the status, I have also said that there was nothing said in those talks 
about the timelines that could have mislead anyone who did happen to be in New 
Orleans to hear that.


On Mon, Oct 30, 2023, at 11:28 AM, Miklosovic, Stefan via dev wrote:
I could not agree more with what Benjamin just wrote.

It is truly more about the visibility of the progress. If one looks at this 
(1), well, that seems like a pretty much finished epic, isn't it? If we make ML 
and Jira the only official sources of the truth, then there is no mentioning 
whatoever that there is any delay (or really, just point me to something which 
tells the opposite and I will gladly eat my humble pie).

I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in "New 
Orleans" to do with it. Does it mean that only people who are going to New 
Orleans are about to learn what the actual progress is? I just read the ML and 
Jira tickets.

It is questionable how to track this, maybe a commiter's digest would serve the 
role just perfectly as Maxim suggested. Josh's summaries are also super nice to 
use for this. I always find it helpful to see the overall picture and I can not 
thank Josh enough for writing it down. He always spices it up with his own 
writing style which I find engaging but that is just an observation.

(1) 
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-18330

Regards


From: Benjamin Lerer mailto:ble...@apache.org>>
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 10:45
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 
5.1-alpha1)

NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or open 
attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.



The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public JIRA's + 
feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM and Accord 
are the most transparent this kind of development has ever been on this 
project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where the degree of 
reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to not just hit 
diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small group of peoples' 
ability to make rapid progress on something.

I feel that there are several misunderstanding going on. When I am talking 
about visibility, I am not talking specifically of Accord or TCM. I just do not 
believe that we are doing a good job generally in term of visibility, me 
included.
When I talk about visibility, I am also not talking about how a feature is 
supposed to work or its internals. I think that a really good job was made on 
that front.

By visibility, what I am referring to is progress visibility. A lot of features 
have been pushed in the project at an advanced state or near complete state. 
There are sometime good reasons for it as the feature might have already been 
existing somewhere in a fork for quite some time already. The issue with that 
approach is that it makes thing hard to anticipate and usually take everybody 
not involved by surprise. This make it hard for us as a community to organize 
ourselves.
The project is changing and there are more and more dependencies between 
features/improvements. We had the case this time with Java 17 support being 
needed for Accord and ANN, with ANN being build on top of SAI and Accord on top 
of TCM.
I expect more and more dependencies coming in the future. Getting a reviews in 
a reasonable time fram

Call for Presentations now open: Community over Code EU 2024

[Ryan Skraba]

(Note: You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the dev@
list for one or more projects of the Apache Software Foundation.)

It's back *and* it's new!

We're excited to announce that the first edition of Community over
Code Europe (formerly known as ApacheCon EU) which will be held at the
Radisson Blu Carlton Hotel in Bratislava, Slovakia from June 03-05,
2024! This eagerly anticipated event will be our first live EU
conference since 2019.

The Call for Presentations (CFP) for Community Over Code EU 2024 is
now open at https://eu.communityovercode.org/blog/cfp-open/,
and will close 2024/01/12 23:59:59 GMT.

We welcome submissions on any topic related to the Apache Software
Foundation, Apache projects, or the communities around those projects.
We are specifically looking for presentations in the following
categories:

* API & Microservices
* Big Data Compute
* Big Data Storage
* Cassandra
* CloudStack
* Community
* Data Engineering
* Fintech
* Groovy
* Incubator
* IoT
* Performance Engineering
* Search
* Tomcat, Httpd and other servers

Additionally, we are thrilled to introduce a new feature this year: a
poster session. This addition will provide an excellent platform for
showcasing high-level projects and incubator initiatives in a visually
engaging manner. We believe this will foster lively discussions and
facilitate networking opportunities among participants.

All my best, and thanks so much for your participation,

Ryan Skraba (on behalf of the program committee)

[Countdown]: https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/to?iso=20240112T2359&p0=1440

[CMWG] November 1 meeting

[Melissa Logan]

Hi everyone,

Please join us this Wednesday, November 1 for the monthly Cassandra Working
Group (CMWG) meeting at 8am PT / 11 ET /  3pm UTC.

Add your updates or new discussions/questions to the doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_73-iSjo1ZKKFn410rOCqNctnhNJOFLvbVA225OdrXY/edit

If you need access to the doc, just request it (or hit reply and I will
add).

Draft agenda

   -

   Cassandra Summit 
   + AI.Dev 
   (Patrick)
   -

   Catalyst program update (Melissa)
   -

   Meetup panel suggestions for Cassandra + AI panel (Melissa)
   -

   November 28 Contributor Meeting (Melissa)
   -

   Cassandra marketing (Melissa)


Speak soon!

Melissa

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Patrick McFadin]

He's talking about my Accord talks ;) I'm sure I've said quite a few times
that Accord is shipping with 5.0 at the end of 2023. That was a reasonable
thing to say, but new information, new updates.

If you scroll back 30-40 replies, I live-blogged my realization that's not
going to happen and coming to terms with what that all means for users. Not
the end of the world. What I do hope is that we can move on and ship a
version of 5 in 2023. Cassandra Summit is on Dec 12-13. First one in years
and a huge opportunity. This is when many people will be paying attention
to the project. Getting beyond the notion that the Cassandra project can't
ship code will shut down naysayers that we can't. We have a lot to
celebrate, and users are dying to get their hands on 5 in whatever form it
takes. What do we need to do to get there?

I still plan on giving my Accord talk at Summit. I'll add the element of
updating people on where we are as a project and what to expect.

Patrick


On Mon, Oct 30, 2023 at 3:52 AM Miklosovic, Stefan via dev <
dev@cassandra.apache.org> wrote:

> OK fair enough, I am taking that part back.
>
> 
> From: Alex Petrov 
> Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 11:45
> To: dev
> Cc: Miklosovic, Stefan
> Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an
> immediate 5.1-alpha1)
>
> NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or
> open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
> safe.
>
>
>
> > I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in
> "New Orleans" to do with it.
>
> Stefan, please make sure to read the context, and re-read my message,
> since it seems like you have completely misinterpreted it. My message
> states clearly that I was responding to someone saying that there were
> talks that mentioned some seemingly misleading timelines. I have checked
> the talks by the people who were involved in the feature development and
> found no trace of that. So not only have I not said that someone should
> have been in New Orleans to be aware of the status, I have also said that
> there was nothing said in those talks about the timelines that could have
> mislead anyone who did happen to be in New Orleans to hear that.
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 30, 2023, at 11:28 AM, Miklosovic, Stefan via dev wrote:
> I could not agree more with what Benjamin just wrote.
>
> It is truly more about the visibility of the progress. If one looks at
> this (1), well, that seems like a pretty much finished epic, isn't it? If
> we make ML and Jira the only official sources of the truth, then there is
> no mentioning whatoever that there is any delay (or really, just point me
> to something which tells the opposite and I will gladly eat my humble pie).
>
> I also do not understand what has some session about TCM and Accord in
> "New Orleans" to do with it. Does it mean that only people who are going to
> New Orleans are about to learn what the actual progress is? I just read the
> ML and Jira tickets.
>
> It is questionable how to track this, maybe a commiter's digest would
> serve the role just perfectly as Maxim suggested. Josh's summaries are also
> super nice to use for this. I always find it helpful to see the overall
> picture and I can not thank Josh enough for writing it down. He always
> spices it up with his own writing style which I find engaging but that is
> just an observation.
>
> (1) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-18330<
> https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fissues.apache.org%2Fjira%2Fbrowse%2FCASSANDRA-18330&data=05%7C01%7CStefan.Miklosovic%40netapp.com%7Cc975f7da86354b65643d08dbd93571b5%7C4b0911a0929b4715944bc03745165b3a%7C0%7C0%7C638342595813973401%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=u1IAj4WibjhRfSDe103x1xEiiHck2T2PvwGrMdDaaTs%3D&reserved=0
> >
>
> Regards
>
> 
> From: Benjamin Lerer mailto:ble...@apache.org>>
> Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 10:45
> To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
> Subject: Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an
> immediate 5.1-alpha1)
>
> NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or
> open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
> safe.
>
>
>
> The CEP process + dedicated development channels on ASF slack + public
> JIRA's + feature branches in the ASF repo we've seen with specifically TCM
> and Accord are the most transparent this kind of development has ever been
> on this project, and I'd argue right at the sweet spot or past where the
> degree of reaching out to external parties to get feedback starts to not
> just hit diminishing returns but starts to actively hurt a small group of
> peoples' ability to make rapid progress on something.
>
> I feel that there are several misunderstanding going o

Removal of deprecations added in Cassandra 3.x

[Miklosovic, Stefan via dev]

Hi,

similarly as for Cassandra 1.x and 2.x deprecations removal done in 
CASSANDRA-18959, you are welcome to comment on the removal of all stuff 
deprecated in 3.x (1).

If nobody objects after couple days I would like to proceed to the actual 
removal. Please tell me if you want something to keep around.

(1) https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-18975

Thanks

[VOTE] Release Apache Cassandra 5.0-alpha2

[Mick Semb Wever]

Proposing the test build of Cassandra 5.0-alpha2 for release.

DISCLAIMER, this alpha release does not contain the features:
Transactional Cluster Metadata (CEP-21) and Accord Transactions
(CEP-15).  These features are under discussion to be pushed to a
5.1-alpha1 release, with an eta still this year.

This release does contain Vector Similarity Search (CEP-30).

Please also note that this is an alpha release and what that means,
further info at
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/Release+Lifecycle

sha1: ea76d148c374198fede6978422895668857a927f
Git: https://github.com/apache/cassandra/tree/5.0-alpha2-tentative
Maven Artifacts:
https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/orgapachecassandra-1317/org/apache/cassandra/cassandra-all/5.0-alpha2/

The Source and Build Artifacts, and the Debian and RPM packages and
repositories, are available here:
https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/cassandra/5.0-alpha2/

The vote will be open for 72 hours (longer if needed). Everyone who
has tested the build is invited to vote. Votes by PMC members are
considered binding. A vote passes if there are at least three binding
+1s and no -1's.

[1]: CHANGES.txt:
https://github.com/apache/cassandra/blob/5.0-alpha2-tentative/CHANGES.txt
[2]: NEWS.txt: 
https://github.com/apache/cassandra/blob/5.0-alpha2-tentative/NEWS.txt

Re: Removal of deprecations added in Cassandra 3.x

[Mick Semb Wever]

> similarly as for Cassandra 1.x and 2.x deprecations removal done in 
> CASSANDRA-18959, you are welcome to comment on the removal of all stuff 
> deprecated in 3.x (1).
>
> If nobody objects after couple days I would like to proceed to the actual 
> removal. Please tell me if you want something to keep around.
>


I have concerns, but I won't block.

I would like to propose we focus on getting to a 5.0-beta1 release.
To do that we should be stopping all work on cassandra-5.0 that isn't
about stabilisation.

Can this land in trunk instead ?
How much work is in front of us to get to 5.0-beta1 ?  (Please add
fixVersion 5.0-beta for stabilisation work.)

Re: Removal of deprecations added in Cassandra 3.x

[Miklosovic, Stefan via dev]

Sure we can do that just for trunk. No problem with that. Hence, I am parking 
this effort for a while.


From: Mick Semb Wever 
Sent: Monday, October 30, 2023 22:56
To: dev@cassandra.apache.org
Subject: Re: Removal of deprecations added in Cassandra 3.x

NetApp Security WARNING: This is an external email. Do not click links or open 
attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.




> similarly as for Cassandra 1.x and 2.x deprecations removal done in 
> CASSANDRA-18959, you are welcome to comment on the removal of all stuff 
> deprecated in 3.x (1).
>
> If nobody objects after couple days I would like to proceed to the actual 
> removal. Please tell me if you want something to keep around.
>


I have concerns, but I won't block.

I would like to propose we focus on getting to a 5.0-beta1 release.
To do that we should be stopping all work on cassandra-5.0 that isn't
about stabilisation.

Can this land in trunk instead ?
How much work is in front of us to get to 5.0-beta1 ?  (Please add
fixVersion 5.0-beta for stabilisation work.)

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[Mick Semb Wever]

Hoping we can get clarity on this.

The proposal was, once TCM and Accord merges to trunk,  then immediately
branch cassandra-5.1 and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1 release.

This was to focus on stabilising TCM and Accord as soon as it lands, hence
the immediate branching.

And the alpha release as that is what our Release Lifecycle states it to be.
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/Release+Lifecycle

My understanding is that there was no squeezing in extra features into 5.1
after TCM+Accord lands, and there's no need for a "preview" release – we
move straight to the alpha, as our lifecycle states.  And we will describe
all usability shortcomings and bugs with the alpha, our lifecycle docs
permit this, if we feel the need to.

All this said, if TCM does not merge before the Summit, and we want to get
a release into user hands, it has been suggested we cut a preview release
5.1-preview1 off the feature branch.  This is a different scenario, and
only a mitigation plan.




On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 14:20, Benedict  wrote:

> The time to stabilise is orthogonal to the time we branch. Once we branch
> we stop accepting new features for the branch, and work to stabilise.
>
> My understanding is we will branch as soon as we have a viable alpha
> containing TCM and Accord. That means pretty soon after they land in the
> project, which we expect to be around the summit.
>
> If this isn’t the expectation we should make that clear, as it will affect
> how this decision is made.
>
> On 26 Oct 2023, at 10:14, Benjamin Lerer  wrote:
>
> 
>
>> Regarding the release of 5.1, I understood the proposal to be that we cut
>> an actual alpha, thereby sealing the 5.1 release from new features. Only
>> features merged before we cut the alpha would be permitted, and the alpha
>> should be cut as soon as practicable. What exactly would we be waiting for?
>
>
> The problem I believe is about expectations. It seems that your
> expectation is that a release with only TCM and Accord will reach GA
> quickly. Based on the time it took us to release 4.1, I am simply expecting
> more delays (a GA around end of May, June). In which case it seems to me
> that we could be interested in shipping more stuff in the meantime
> (thinking of CASSANDRA-15254 or CEP-29 for example).
> I do not have a strong opinion, I just want to make sure that we all share
> the same understanding and fully understand what we agree upon.
>
> Le jeu. 26 oct. 2023 à 10:59, Benjamin Lerer  a écrit :
>
>> I am surprised this needs to be said, but - especially for long-running
>>> CEPs - you must involve yourself early, and certainly within some
>>> reasonable time of being notified the work is ready for broader input and
>>> review. In this case, more than six months ago.
>>
>>
>> It is unfortunately more complicated than that because six month ago
>> Ekaterina and I were working on supporting Java 17 and dropping Java 8
>> which was needed by different ongoing works. We both missed the
>> announcement that TCM was ready for review and anyway would not have been
>> available at that time. Maxim has asked me ages ago for a review of
>> CASSANDRA-15254 
>> more than 6 months ago and I have not been able to help him so far. We all
>> have a limited bandwidth and can miss some announcements.
>>
>> The project has grown and a lot of things are going on in parallel. There
>> are also more interdependencies between the different projects. In my
>> opinion what we are lacking is a global overview of the different things
>> going on in the project and some rough ideas of the status of the different
>> significant pieces. It would allow us to better organize ourselves.
>>
>> Le jeu. 26 oct. 2023 à 00:26, Benedict  a écrit :
>>
>>> I have spoken privately with Ekaterina, and to clear up some possible
>>> ambiguity: I realise nobody has demanded a delay to this work to conduct
>>> additional reviews; a couple of folk have however said they would prefer
>>> one.
>>>
>>>
>>> My point is that, as a community, we need to work on ensuring folk that
>>> care about a CEP participate at an appropriate time. If they aren’t able
>>> to, the consequences of that are for them to bear.
>>>
>>>
>>> We should be working to avoid surprises as CEP start to land. To this
>>> end, I think we should work on some additional paragraphs for the
>>> governance doc covering expectations around the landing of CEPs.
>>>
>>> On 25 Oct 2023, at 21:55, Benedict  wrote:
>>>
>>> 
>>>
>>> I am surprised this needs to be said, but - especially for long-running
>>> CEPs - you must involve yourself early, and certainly within some
>>> reasonable time of being notified the work is ready for broader input and
>>> review. In this case, more than six months ago.
>>>
>>>
>>> This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it is disappointing to
>>> see it again. Clearly we need to make this explicit in the guidance docs.
>>>
>>>
>>> Regarding the r

Re: Push TCM (CEP-21) and Accord (CEP-15) to 5.1 (and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1)

[J. D. Jordan]

That is my understanding as well. If the TCM and Accord based on TCM branches are ready to commit by ~12/1 we can cut a 5.1 branch and then a 5.1-alpha release.Where “ready to commit” means our usual things of two committer +1 and green CI etc.If we are not ready to commit then I propose that as long as everything in the accord+tcm Apache repo branch has had two committer +1’s, but maybe people are still working on fixes for getting CI green or similar, we cut a 5.1-preview  build from the feature branch to vote on with known issues documented.  This would not be the preferred path, but would be a way to have a voted on release for summit.-Jeremiah On Oct 30, 2023, at 5:59 PM, Mick Semb Wever  wrote:Hoping we can get clarity on this.The proposal was, once TCM and Accord merges to trunk,  then immediately branch cassandra-5.1 and cut an immediate 5.1-alpha1 release.This was to focus on stabilising TCM and Accord as soon as it lands, hence the immediate branching.And the alpha release as that is what our Release Lifecycle states it to be.https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CASSANDRA/Release+Lifecycle My understanding is that there was no squeezing in extra features into 5.1 after TCM+Accord lands, and there's no need for a "preview" release – we move straight to the alpha, as our lifecycle states.  And we will describe all usability shortcomings and bugs with the alpha, our lifecycle docs permit this, if we feel the need to.All this said, if TCM does not merge before the Summit, and we want to get a release into user hands, it has been suggested we cut a preview release 5.1-preview1 off the feature branch.  This is a different scenario, and only a mitigation plan.  On Thu, 26 Oct 2023 at 14:20, Benedict  wrote:The time to stabilise is orthogonal to the time we branch. Once we branch we stop accepting new features for the branch, and work to stabilise.My understanding is we will branch as soon as we have a viable alpha containing TCM and Accord. That means pretty soon after they land in the project, which we expect to be around the summit.If this isn’t the expectation we should make that clear, as it will affect how this decision is made.On 26 Oct 2023, at 10:14, Benjamin Lerer  wrote:
Regarding the release of 5.1, I 
understood the proposal to be that we cut an actual alpha, thereby 
sealing the 5.1 release from new features. Only features merged before 
we cut the alpha would be permitted, and the alpha should be cut as soon
 as practicable. What exactly would we be waiting for? The problem I believe is about expectations. It seems that your expectation is that a release with only TCM and Accord will reach GA quickly. Based on the time it took us to release 4.1, I am simply expecting more delays (a GA around end of May, June). In which case it seems to me that we could be interested in shipping more stuff in the meantime (thinking of CASSANDRA-15254 or CEP-29 for example).I do not have a strong opinion, I just want to make sure that we all share the same understanding and fully understand what we agree upon.    

Le jeu. 26 oct. 2023 à 10:59, Benjamin Lerer  a écrit :
I am surprised this needs to be said, 
but - especially for long-running CEPs - you must involve yourself 
early, and certainly within some reasonable time of being notified the 
work is ready for broader input and review. In this case, more than six 
months ago.It is unfortunately more complicated than that because six month ago Ekaterina and I were working on supporting Java 17 and dropping Java 8 which was needed by different ongoing works. We both missed the announcement that TCM was ready for review and anyway would not have been available at that time. Maxim has asked me ages ago for a review of 
CASSANDRA-15254  more than 6 months ago and I have not been able to help him so far. We all have a limited bandwidth and can miss some announcements.    

The project has grown and a lot of things are going on in parallel. There are also more interdependencies between the different projects. In my opinion what we are lacking is a global overview of the different things going on in the project and some rough ideas of the status of the different significant pieces. It would allow us to better organize ourselves.    

Le jeu. 26 oct. 2023 à 00:26, Benedict  a écrit :I have spoken privately with Ekaterina, and to clear up some possible ambiguity: I realise nobody has demanded a delay to this work to conduct additional reviews; a couple of folk have however said they would prefer one.

My point is that, as a community, we need to work on ensuring folk that care about a CEP participate at an appropriate time. If they aren’t able to, the consequences of that are for them to bear. We should be working to avoid surprises as CEP start to land. To this end, I think we should work on some additional paragraphs for the governance doc covering expectations around the lan