Release 2.5.0 Recap
My contributions
In all honesty, I didn't do much for Release 2.5.0, I worked on an issue and PR related to the changelogs that are built automatically when Telescope makes a release. It uses release-changelog-builder-action in GitHub Actions, and some custom configurations could be made through a JSON config file. I think the issue and PR is quite simple and kind of self-explanatory, so I won't go into detail here.
Triage and Release
We had our first week of Student Sheriffs and student-run triages. They did great, it seemed to run smoothly, and I'm feeling lucky that they've set a great example. We also had a mini-meeting to see how releases are pushed out.
Moving on
Tuesday Lecture Recap
The bulk of this blog is to figure out which areas I want focus on for the whole term, beginning with Release 2.6.0. But to start out, I'd like to conclude what I felt about the Tuesday lecture - "Information Overload".
It was quite informative with all a tour of Telescope, a blog from the prof on our current debts, and all the areas that we could work on. At the same time though, many of the technical language and concepts are still unfamiliar to me. It makes me slightly panic about my experiences and abilities.
Areas of Focus
According to this list of initial priorities, I once again was overly ambitious and managed to list myself into 5 of the 7 areas. I know that's way more than I can possibly chew, so lets try to fix that.
I've considered it long and hard and I've decided that, for Telescope, I'd like to focus more on the back-end. I had more experience with front-end projects, and for me it seems front-end code is easy to visualize and to catch errors or bugs. Back-end however, I barely had any experience with, and Telescope seems like a good place to learn and experiment how many bugs I can put into. (Yes, I will try to not put in any major breaking bugs, but I already know that its just wishful thinking and not possible.)
So, I'm thinking of prioritizing microservice back-end APIs, probably work on Search. Since microservices and Docker seem to be somewhat intertwined, I think its something I'll have to focus on as well. I'm really green with Docker, so perhaps starting out I won't be able to do any in-depth work on it. But hopefully as the term goes on, I'll become more familiar with it.
2.6 Prep
One open assigned issue that I have currently is on Extract ElasticSearch from Satellite, use in all relevant services, which couldn't have come at a better time to prove my resolve on working with microservices. Honestly, at this moment, I don't really know how I'll approach it. But, as with all issues there's just 3 simple steps.
- Research - I'll have to know what ElastiSearch is, explore Satellite, and understand how its microservices are being used in Telescope for a smooth extraction. My plan is to do quite a bit of research and bombard the prof with questions early next week.
- Coding and debugging - Then its time to get hands on with the coding. Since I'm assigned with another student, it might be interesting to see how we divide the work or if we do pair programming.
- Getting it merged - Prof seems to think its easy enough to be done in 2.6.0. I'm hoping so as well.
Other Issues
Another issue that I still have open is Adding tests to search. This is most likely a longer term project as tests would need to be gradually added as people work on search. It'll also be a good motive for me to get to know how our current search works.
Conclusion
Despite not having done much in 2.5.0, it was still a very content-packed week for me with the lecture, meetings, all the discussions on Slack and comments to read in all the PRs. I still have doubts in myself, but this class still has me hyped, and I'm looking forward to what I get to do in the coming release.
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