Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Group -1/Progress reports/2024-09-19

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Group -1 progress reports week ending 2024-09-19

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Report on activities in the Group -1 project for the week ending 2024-09-19.

[WE6.2.1] Publish pre-train single version containers

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T369115

If we publish a versioned build of MediaWiki, extensions, skins, and Wikimedia configuration at least once per day we will uncover new constraints and establish a baseline of wallclock time needed to perform a build.

Progress update

Stage: Engineering/Development
Dan has the job to create/update the "wmf/next" branch working on the releases-jenkins server
Dan split out image building into a new scap build-images sub-command.
The next job that Dan is working on has uncovered a need for php and mswcript on the releases-jenkins server to support scap's execution of the rebuildLocalisationCache.php maintenance script.
- Discussion of how to resolve this issue started with the semi-obvious idea of applying the correct Puppet modules to the server to install the missing dependencies. This action would however introduce a new usage of MediaWiki-centric Puppet code that currently has an uncertain future. This path would trade expedience for long term stability.
- Discussion ended with a loose plan for Dan to explore replacing the mwscript usage with docker exec of a container with the appropriate version of PHP installed. This should be possible not only for the new image creation job under development, but also when scap is used on the production and deployment-prep deployment servers. This path seems likely to take a few days longer than the Puppet solution would, but is expected to yield a more resilient long-term solution.

Any new metrics related to the hypothesis

None

Any emerging blockers or risks

None

Any unresolved dependencies - do you depend on another team that hasn’t already given you what you need? Are you on the hook to give another team something you aren’t able to give right now?

Not yet

Have there been any new lessons from the hypothesis?

No

Have there been any changes to the hypothesis scope or timeline?

Minor scap refactoring related to l10n cache building has been added to the planned scope based on team discussion. This is currently expected to have negligible impact on the overall timeline for the current hypothesis. We should have a better understanding by next week.