Gluster Release-8 Planning
=====

## Meeting Details

* Link - https://meet.google.com/uyv-pdyx-nvi
* Timing: Tue, 21st Jan, 2020 : 06:00AM UTC (08:00 Israel, 11:30 India, 14:00 Beijing, 15:00 Tokyo, 17:00 Sydney)

### Attendees

* Fill in the details once you join the meeting.
* Company / Contact are optional
* In Remark section, add what components you look into, what parts you are interested for Release-8, Why are you attending this meeting, etc etc.

| Name | Company | contact detail if you prefer | Remarks |
|------|-----------|---------|----|
| Amar Tumballi | Kadalu.io | [e-mail] | Host, Maintainer - GlusterFS |
| Yati Padia | Red Hat | [e-mail] | - |
|Hari Gowtham | Red Hat | [e-mail] | - |
| Rafi KC | Red Hat | [e-mail] | - |
| Kotresh HR | Red Hat | [e-mail] |
| Ravishankar N | Red Hat | [e-mail] |
| Sunil Kumar Acharya | Red Hat | [e-mail] |
| Sunny Kumar | Red Hat | [e-mail] | _ |
| Shwetha Acharya| Red Hat | [e-mail] | - |
| Sheetal Pamecha | Red Hat | [e-mail] | - |
| Aravinda Vishwanathapura | Kadalu.io | [e-mail] | |
| Sankarshan M | Kadalu.IO | [e-mail] | |
| Yaniv Kaul | Red Hat | | |
| Ashish P| Red Hat | | |

## Goal

A release of Gluster, which is stable, and provides the functionality to users, as promised in the documentation. This release also should be a stepping stone for [GlusterX goal](https://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-devel/2019-September/056606.html)

### References

* https://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-devel/2019-November/056709.html
* https://lists.gluster.org/pipermail/gluster-devel/2020-January/056767.html
* https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/milestone/10

## Timeline

GA- April 15th, 2020.
RC - 31st March, 2020.
beta - 2nd March, 2020.
Branching - 10th March, 2020.

## Primary Usecases

*
* Add Any usecase which are the focus for the release

## What is targetted ?

All targetted major issues/enhancements should have the tag of ['Release-8'](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/milestone/10) in [github](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues)

### Features

The features which need to get into the release **must** have a Github issue opened, and have the relevant milestone attached. This helps to track the issue more closely. It is necessary to have an owner assigned for the issue, so we are sure whom to ask for progress.

* Non-Root GeoReplication
- [name=Aravinda] Enabling root ssh is not favoured, so better to project non-root georep (through mount broker)

* Debugging :
- Error codes [Issue #280](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/280) [name=Amar Tumballi]
- Instrumentation

* Logging :
- Structured logging [Issue #657](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/657) [name=Yati P]
-

* Observability :
- More documentation on how to use prometheus or other tools for Monitoring.
- [gstatus](https://github.com/gluster/gstatus) Release 8 compatibility

* Maintainability:
- Code cleanup (More static functions etc)
- Function scope, extern function reduction etc
- Locked section reduction

* New Idea Proposoals:
- [vscan xlator](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/265)
- Add more [if you have any]

### Bugs / Issues

A good goal is to have less than 200 bugs (<10% high / urgent severity), and total issues open reduced to less than 200 too.

Current Status:

|[Total Bugs](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/report.cgi?x_axis_field=bug_status&y_axis_field=component&z_axis_field=&no_redirect=1&query_format=report-table&bug_status=__open__&format=table&action=wrap&product=GlusterFS) | 354 |
|[Github issues](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues) | 434 |

* Bugs to target for Release-8
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1793042 - WORM/write-behind
- Add the bugs you want to pick for Release-8 here. We will try to have common field in 'WhiteBoard', and track them separately.

#### How can we reduce these?

* [Issues sorted by least active](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Aupdated-asc) Visit the top of the issue, and if you can close it with a proper comment and label WONTFIX, do so.

* Bugs: If the bug is not critical, and can be resolved with a proper comment, go ahead!

## Notes from the meeting

Introduction by Amar; general setting of expectation from the Gluster 8 release in light of Gluster X discussion from the last meetup. Stability is the focus. However, keeping documentation and codebase in sync helps our users and is important to keep in mind.

There is a lot of steps to undertake in order to push the project towards the intent of Gluster X. Not breaking things; but making features and capabilities progressive.

Network layer optimization is an improvement that would require intensive effort to make possible. It should be discussed and planned but not realistic for release 8.

[Yaniv] Mohit has an experimental patch for performance enhancement (ls -l etc; anyone has link to the patch?)

Performance improvements are desirable as they have been present for quite a while in Gluster.

[Aravinda] Path-based GeoReplication - the design is available. It has to be made to work with sharding. The implementation is not ready yet to make it a target for release 8; likely a release 9

Multiple set of activities around the topic of Global Threadpool. Amar hasn't observed many patches in recent times. Not a release 8

[Yaniv] 3k-4k support has some incremental work available. But a complete set of work required to get it in release 8 is not yet available. [Amar] best to think about using some label based tracking mechanism to see how to test it as entire capability.

RIO has a lot of work at this point and there is not enough full time work being undertaken on this. Amar has a [new approach](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KEwVtSNvDhs4qb63gWx2ulCp5GJjge77NGJk4p_Ms4Q/edit?usp=sharing) that has received comments from Xavi, and need some more from people with experience in RIO like Shyam, Kotresh, Susant, so possibly a release 10 candidate.

Code instrumentation and tracing requires a set of changes across the codebase without a set of designs in place it is not a release 8 target, but this is critical to get going for future performance improvement work, would be great to target 'sooner' than later.

Yati has been working on structured logging and the given the work the remaining it is a good release 8 target. Needs review and more contributions.
- [name=Amar] Structured logging is for machines, so don't expect to have a Meaningful log.
- [name=Aravinda] output will be still readable. The dynamic parts would be moved into the key/value pair format and are searchable. The messages will continue to be a prior part in logs.

GFID-split brain resolution has been commented to be a Day1 issue. Unsure of status. Moving out of release8 milestone

Reviewing the current set of issues at https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+milestone%3A%22Release+8%22 in order to address what is realistic for the release based on likelihood of availability

[Yaniv] Issues tagged with release 8 have a higher chance of been addressed within the time. The topics will be reviewed and appropriately tracked

[Aravinda] Non root geo replication - the documentation would need to be update. Migration methods would be handled.
- This is important because many users may not openup root access to remote machine through SSH.
- Non-Root geo-rep is stable, and is ready to be promoted as the default option now.

[YanivK] Would like see CentOS8 support, scaled volume counts, Performance improvement as the major features listed for Release-8.
- The first 2 would be possible to meet.
- The perf improvement challenge would be 'ambitious'.

[Sankarshan] Why are we seeing only few issues, where are the issues reported by Users listed in Release-8. To sit with Amar to review the [~400 commits since 7.0](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/compare/v7.0...HEAD) and review user reported bugs to check for inclusion.
Also need to look at bugs opened by users in last 4 months to see what are the few we need to include.

[Sanju] Need help with Cluster-ID design. Once design is finalized, we can take it up

[Rafi] SHD-Mux - Lot of work has been done on this. Need to take it to completion. There is lot of changes on client graph switch. Should we take this in, if it brings instability?
- [name=Amar] Can it be optional?
- [name=Rafi] It would be difficult.
- [name=Ravi] Can this be done like Sharding?

[Hari] - Working with Shwetha and Sheetal on Build and automation. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1727727
- How to track this?
- Should I open a github issue? - Yes

[Sunny] Release note for Sunny.
- [sankarshan] to open a release 8 milestone [Github issue](https://github.com/gluster/glusterfs/issues/813) and seek inputs that should be part of release note
- to generate graph off Coverity nearer to the release
- the testing framework has shown errors - needs more focus for that to be stabilized.

[Aravinda]
- gstatus is used still; but not compatible with latest version
- planning to make it compatible with release 8
- monitoring is another aspect which receives requests. A select few metrics with a Grafana dashboard is something that can be targeted. Plan is to have a webinar for Gluster monitoring

[sankarshan] Question for later - what about the Gluster8/oVirt part?