Plone Release Team Minutes 2021-10-12

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Attendees

  • Timo
  • Eric
  • Maurits

Agenda

  • Status Plone 6

    • Backend
      • pre-alpha has been released
      • we should make another pre-alpha release soonish, to not break stuff right before the conference
    • Frontend
      • plone.volto
      • plone.rest
        • new traversal
        • solves a few issues we had in Volto with the new seamless mode
        • we made a 2.0.0a1 release plone.rest · PyPI
        • we will try this out in production (ploneconf site)
        • once it's ready we can make a final release
      • plone.restapi
        • plone.restapi 8 is stable
        • we can move on to plone.restapi 9/10
        • no need to rush
      • Volto 14 (currently alpha.18)
        • new search block
        • locking support (battle-tested with 300 editors working on a Plone site at the same time on a daily basis)
        • use Plone logo
        • deprecate old config
        • new i18n infrastructure
        • we plan to do a final before/during/after the conference
    • Releasing the two sides together

  • Plone 6 Release Schedule

    • Clients ask for long-term perspectives and roadmaps
    • History (Release Schedule — Plone: Enterprise Level CMS - Free and OpenSource - Community Driven - Secure)
      • Plone 3: 11/2007 - 07/2011? -> 4y
      • Plone 4: 08/2010 - 08/2020? -> 10y
      • Plone 5: 09/2015 - 08/2021 -> 6y
    • We support Plone versions way longer than any competitor
    • Though, we failed so far to transform this into a proper marketing advantage
    • The release team and the security team are committed to supporting the upcoming Plone 6 for 5 years -> to be confirmed by the security team (Maurits will take care of it)
    • We will discuss this within the community during the conference to figure out the details
    • We will talk to the marketing team to publish a proper chart/page
    • -> Timo will talk to the marketing team in Sorrento and/or pass it to Érico

  • Python versions we support in Plone 6

    • Plone 6 will ship with support for Python 3.7 - 3.9/3.10 (3.10 depends on Zope).
    • Python (PEP 602 -- Annual Release Cycle for Python | Python.org): 1,5 years of full support, 3,5 years of security fixes
    • If you start with Python 3.10 and Plone 6, you got your 5 years
    • If you use Python 3.7, you will have to upgrade your Python version within the next five years

  • Plone 6 Frontend Release Schedule

    • Volto will continue to move faster than the Plone Backend
    • Node 14 (currently active LTS release, 3 years support, 1y + 2y maintenance)
    • -> Timo will discuss this with the Volto team

  • Plone 6 Frontend Stack parts

    • plone.rest
    • plone.restapi
    • plone.volto. The Plone package might depend on this in the future, we have to figure out how we ship the installer and other things first
    • Volto

  • Loose Coupling between Plone Core and Plone Frontend

    • The Plone frontend stack supports multiple Plone versions at the same time (e.g. current Volto runs on Plone 4 to Plone 6)
    • This is not a big issue because plone.restapi largely abstracts away the Plone version
    • Though, in order to continue this, we need to make sure the frontend stack continues to be loosely coupled to Plone core
    • We have to be careful with

  • Plone frontend stack release management responsibilities

    • Current de-facto responsibilities:
      • Volto
        • Victor is responsible for doing releases and he is the official maintainer of Volto
        • Timo can do releases as well if necessary
        • Rob is not really involved any longer unfortunately
        • The Volto Team meets bi-weekly to discuss open PRs
        • We have a lightweight PLIP process for making decisions as a team
      • plone.rest, plone.restapi
        • Timo is the official maintainer of those packages (release team decision in Ferrara)
        • The release team has permission to make releases but the agreement is that Timo does the releases to make sure all consumers of plone.restapi are considered (and the multiple Plone versions plone.restapi supports)
        • The RESTAPI Team helps to make decisions. Though, not much to do recently since plone.restapi is pretty stable. All new features are driven by Volto and are mainly discussed in the Volto team.
      • plone.volto
        • the new integration package that connects the Plone backend and the frontend
        • Timo does the releases (process could be similar to plone.rest and plone.restapi)
        • Volto team consults and makes decisions (FWT is asked for approval if needed)
      • “The frontend stack”
        • Timo currently takes care of the frontend stack “as a whole”, making sure that the pieces fit together and stay maintainable
        • Timo acts as kind of a product owner and evangelist for Volto and the frontend stack (providing visions and representing Volto to the outside world)
    • The release team supports making those roles official
      • Previously used this in Plone 4 and earlier
        • In charge of approving all changes to relevant sections of the codebase
        • In charge of managing releases for those projects
    • Essentially doing this already, with tacit approval from the community. What do we need to do to make this official? Just announce it?
    • -> we will set up a discussion in Sorrento to discuss this
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