SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
So it's been awhile since I last wrote, and I'm a bit overdue for a status update. So, let me give you all the short version on what's been going on.
First, I've been doing a lot of backend work to drastically reduce the size of the SoylentNews bill month to month. We had a lot of infrastructure that was either unnecessary, or have gotten so many free tier upgrades that they were being vastly underutilized. Along the way, I've given a lot of fine tuning to bits, although I won't say its been problem free, since we went a few weeks without working sidebars. I'm truly sorry for the delays in getting up and running. My personal life chose to become very exciting in December, and I'm still dealing with the fallout of that entire mess. As such, what I had planned went a bit pear-shaped, and I went unexpectedly radio silent. ...
More past the break ...
The biggest problem is that most of the backend is undocumented. I wrote some documents in the early days of the site, but by and large, the site was mostly maintained by individuals who are no longer active on staff. The internal TechOps wiki was woefully out of date, and even I find myself struggling to know how the entire site is put together. Considering it's been online for over 9 years, and was a bit of a rush job out the gate, well, you know, it happens. I think at some point at the decade mark, I will want to chronicle more about SN's history, but let's first make sure we've got a site when we get there.
By and large, I'm not involved in the day to day operations. janrirok has been, and is, at this point the de facto project leader. My role with SoylentNews these days is kinda vague and undefined, since I stepped down privately in 2020, and then stepped back last November. I also find myself very uncertain if I want to even be involved at all, but, ultimately, I was here at the start, and while SoylentNews was always a collaborative project, I left a mark on both what this site is and will be that has persisted over the better part of a decade.
As such, I feel personally obligated to get SoylentNews to the best shape I can possibly get it, and give it the best chance of success I can give it. However, we're in the uncomfortable situation that we have a dated Perl codebase running on undocumented infrastructure that has been creaking along with no major reworks in almost all that time. You can imagine I've been having a fun time of this. Most of the relevant information mostly exists in my head, since I was the one who got Slashcode running all those years ago.
Right now, my biggest victory is I managed to get us off MySQL Cluster, and onto a more normal version of MySQL which drastically reduces memory and disk load in favor of slower load performance.
Moving forward, the solution is to have a reproducible deployment system, likely based around Docker, or possibly even Kubernetes, with all aspects of rehash (the site software) documented. We use GitHub to handle site development, and I think it would be in our best interests to integrate a full CI pipeline for both development and production environments. While implementing this, I also intend to entirely redo every aspect of the backend, complete with proper documentation, so something beside me can actually maintain it. After that, it will actually be practical for SoylentNews to survive past a single person, and we can have a more serious discussion on what the road forward looks like.
I do realize that the last few months have had a lot of ups and down, mixed with excitement and disappointment. I can't really say for sure where we're going, but you know? I want us to reach that decade mark together, and then we'll figure out where we're going beyond that.
Until next time,
~ N
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday February 03, @12:07PM
I am not taking it as a personal attack. You were stating things that provided no useful information to me. Searching for the SQL string that you gave me came up blank.
I am not a programmer on this site. I am an editor who has stepped forward to try to keep the site active. I haven't got any responsibility for the code or how it is built. I could not answer any of your questions unless you gave me more information which you have now done. But I already have a copy of the code - what I am looking for is the bug report that raises the issue and, perhaps, the patch that fixes it. Or tell me where the issue was discussed and with whom. I cannot see who has done what to that code until I know which one I should be looking at. It might be SQL-102 to you - but the software that I worked on didn't use SQL.
My professional programming experience is all with specialist avionic equipment, usually EW related, which was used in operational military aircraft. The rules were simple. If you changed anything (anything!) in a file the software had to be fully tested. We could not include a file whose content contained any changes from the operationally accepted code without it going through a full testing regime. My only experience with Perl is in the early 2000s on some small projects. If it was containerised I could help find bugs and possibly provide fixes, but I am not going to be working on the live code.
Saying that software should be changed is easy - but who is going to change it? Nobody is stepping forward. Are you? Others have suggested rewriting it in a different language. Who do they envisage doing that work? There is no development team. Other than NC there is nobody today who has access or the ability to rebuild the code and put it onto our servers. There are 2 sysops volunteers who are chomping at the bit to get involved but until NC can give them access and the magic incantations they are doing their best to establish their own working versions of the code so that they can start getting familiar with it and how it is built. There is no testing team. We have a handful of editors who are keeping the front pages filled, someone working on IRC, wikis, log files etc, and NC.
You probably have a valid complaint - but it is impossible to tell from what you have said so far. We know what the problems are, what we need are people who are prepared to fix them. If it is so easy to fix that SQL why hasn't somebody provided the fix and changed the code? It seems to be that it is always somebody else's responsibility. But there there isn't a 'somebody else'.