[ckan-dev] ckan developer meeting notes 2014-02-04

[Joe Tsoi]

Chair - kindly
Notes - joet

Agenda
======
Pull requests
-------------
https://github.com/okfn/ckan/pulls?direction=desc&page=1&sort=updated&state=open
   * switch to default rtd theme (seanh)
   * altering table for datastore (kindly)
   * update ckan.po - amercader: 'may already be fixed on transifex'
- seanh: 'we should update docs about translations, we get many
translations PRs, leads to many rejected prs' - (amercader)
   * doc tweaks from winter summit - (nigelb)
   * default package_show schema causes 500 error - won't be included
for 2.2, people should reindex solr on database upgrade.
   * testing extensions tip (seanh)
   * db upgrade warning message - can close, database migration 069
was working correctly. We might want to add tests to database
migrations to make sure that they are wrapped in transactions as some
currently aren't.
Issues
------
 https://github.com/okfn/ckan/issues?state=open
   * Use eq_ from nose tools - (nigelb)
   * add pylons sessions to plugins toolkit. "should pylons.sessions
be in the plugin toolkit?". Putting pylons stuff in toolkit tightly
couples us to pylons. ckanext-persona could use auth ticket cookie
instead? seanh will investigate details about ckan login further.
Could also use external library like flask's it's dangerous.
   * use ckan.common. json everywhere - as long as we all agree on
one, everyone's happy
General Questions
------------------
   * Old filestore - problems with OFS cropping up (nigel) - OFS uses
a JSON file to store metadata about resources. Fetching a resource
involves doing a lookup against in this file. OFS doesn't work with
multiple threads, and it causes the file to lose data easily,
especially as the number of files in the filestore increases. This
causes CKAN to return 404s when the file exists on the disk. Nigel to
look into creating script to regenerate the json file.
   * Testing policy (nigel) - our test factories are incomplete so
there is difficulty when writing new tests. Factories are just
wrappers around action functions. Decided that If there are no
existing factories it is ok to use call_action to create the data you
need. There is pr for new test factories in #1386. These could serve
as a good example when creating your own new factories.
   * Better title and description for issues (amercader) - titles are
used in the change log - we should make issues so they can be read in
the future and by people not involved in that PR
   * datastore_create docs confusion
http://docs.ckan.org/en/latest/datastore.html#ckanext.datastore.logic.action.datastore_create
"This endpoint also supports altering tables, aliases and indexes"
(wardi) -The docs for these are incomplete and misleading. joet will
go back and add and correct documentation for the datastore actions.
We could split out datastore add columns from create, and create could
internally use this action later
   * ckan-service-provider question (wardi) - could improve
description and docs. yes it can be recommended as a job running
service, though it may have some rough edges. avoids running other
non-webservice task queues like celery which have caused some problems
in the past. would be good for ckanext-qa sort of work (link
checking). so far only used for datapusher