Technical Lead Team rolling issues, shoutouts, and meeting deciders - Part 1, to be discussed at TLT Meeting 12 Jan 2023

[valeriupredoi]

Followup item from #62 - @ESMValGroup/technical-lead-development-team please post your new ideas for discussion items here, we will try and organize a TLT call in the first week of January 2023 (sometime between 9 and 13 Jan, I will bug people with a Doodle after NY day). In the meantime, @remi-kazeroni and myself will put together the minutes from yesterday's TLT call and add a link here, so things get organized nicely; also, have a look at #62 and please move any points from there that you feel still need touching up on 🍺 🎄

EDIT with the minutes from TLT 13 December 2022: note that points 6, 7 and 8 are TBD, maybe we can touch upon them before the next release, ie at the January call.

[zklaus]

Should we open the Slack to the general (ESMValTool) public?

[valeriupredoi]

I like the idea! But what do you mean by general (ESMValTool) public - the developers (all) or just other teams (science, outreach etc)? Or you have this in mind as another really open platform for general support, like jasmin_general for anyone with Slack and using ESMValTool?

[remi-kazeroni]

@bouweandela, @zklaus: would be positive about that
@valeriupredoi, @remi-kazeroni: have some reservations that users would stop using github to report issues.
@saskia: experience from other projects not very positive
Opening access: to be discussed with the other teams. As a first step we could open access to other teams and structure our Slack a bit more.

[remi-kazeroni]

Approaches to run all recipes (during releases)

Follow up on #62 (comment)

[remi-kazeroni]

Release procedure: documentation

[Originally posted by @valeriupredoi]

release procedure for ESMValTool is involving and not well documented - I'd like to discuss ESMValGroup/ESMValTool#2895 and also the spread of release workload - I think we can safely say that 2 people (release managers) would be needed in the eventuality that RTW doesn't come online before the next release (even so, it might be experimental, and a full run of all the recipes might still be needed one last release). I would also want to touch upon ESMValGroup/ESMValTool#2895 (also mentioned in my previous comment) and specifically data dirs on The Big Levante

@bouweandela adds to this: This would also be a good and related discussion topic: ESMValGroup/ESMValTool#2883

[bouweandela]

From the minutes of the previous meeting:

Documentation @valeriupredoi will update the release documentation early January, previous release managers can then take a look

Has this happened?

[remi-kazeroni]

Administration of the VM

Follow up on #62 (comment)

[remi-kazeroni]

Upcoming release v2.8

Shall we have a quick look at the Core milestone v2.8? We could focus only on the few "biggest" PRs (e.g. is-enes3 related ones) and check what is the timeline to complete the work, review, test and merge. I'm just wondering if starting the release process a couple of weeks later would help to have everything we need and promised properly integrated.

[remi-kazeroni]

Agenda - Jan 12, 2023

1. Action items for previous meeting:

• common Gmail address to share credentials for services used to develop ESMValTool. See here (fuuuu... forgot again, will do TODAY!)

2. Opening the Slack to the general (ESMValTool) public
3. Upcoming release v2.8 - status of major PRs
4. Release procedure: documentation
5. Approaches to run all recipes (during releases)
6. Administration of the VM
   x134. Use .conda package fileformat output?

This list contains links to all suggested topics for this meeting. We can reorder the list at the beginning of the meeting.

[valeriupredoi]

@remi-kazeroni @valeriupredoi for minutes:

3. Release 2.8: milestone 2.8 list examined, aiming at the big/important PRs:
   • @bouweandela
     • a bit slower since review is at a premium - Support wildcards in the recipe and improve support for ancillary variables and dataset versioning ESMValCore#1609 is close to be merged (dataset versioning is important);
     • Add esmvalcore.dataset module ESMValCore#1877 is important but needs an overhaul of recipes handling -> maybe include it after release? Downside: IS-ENES3 feature will not be included (@remi-kazeroni stresses the fact that it's an IS-ENES3 milestone release);
     • @bouweandela suggests @remi-kezeroni decides if this is really needed for the IS-ENES3-themed release;
     • @valeriupredoi possible to delay the release so we can get that bug PR in, and test only once;
     • @zklaus may be a problem once the IS-ENES3 money dried up? @bouweandela says his money is on low, so big feature work should be done by April
     • @bouweandela sets the roadmap: Add esmvalcore.dataset module ESMValCore#1877 into main then main back into Support wildcards in the recipe and improve support for ancillary variables and dataset versioning ESMValCore#1609 that will be split in little pullets
     • @bouweandela - testing should (normally) be done only for the release
   • going through PRs for 2.8 milestone list, and discussing which one is good to be in the release or not;
     • @schlunma Made ICON output UGRID-compliant (on-the-fly) ESMValCore#1664 will be reviewed by @bsolino and @bouweandela
   • going through the 2.8 milestone issues also;
     • one thing is the CMOR obs4mips tables are ye olde obs4MIPs CMOR tables could use an update ESMValCore#1890
     • don't pin iris

Delay release by 2 wks