NetBox Maintainers Meeting Minutes, 08 Feb 2024

[jeffgdotorg]

NetBox maintainers meeting minutes, 08 Feb 2024
[Jeremy] Please help with bugs

• We need more hands on this area. Please pitch in when you can.

[Jeremy] Rearchitecting model registration (#15042)

• Came up while Arthur was working on user model stuff. We've been using a signal that's supported in Django but really is meant as an internal mechanism. We understand now why it's happening and that we can address it by moving from class_prepared() to ready(), which is probably better supported anyway. There's fallout that we need to deal with, but we have yet to uncover the needed mechanism.
• Without objection, Jeremy will tag this with the v4.0 milestone.

[Jeremy] What to do with is_staff designation on User model?

• Django admin disabled by default in #12325
• Custom user model introduced in #12795
• Historically, is_staff has been used to decide whether a given user has access to the Django admin UI, which we're disabling by default (Effectively removing) in 4.0. The only other place we know we use it is in the navigation menu, to decide whether or not to display the remaining admin items (the plugins list and the Django RQ views).
• ↳ Dan: There's currently no other permission around the RQ stuff, right?
• ↳ Jeremy: Right. We don't have to get rid of it, but it's a field we inherited from the default model. We ultimately need to keep it around for use by plugins that depend on the Django admin UI.
• ↳ Dan: Can we just update the docs and not remove it?
• ↳ Jeremy: Concur. We can revisit down the road when we fully remove the admin panel.
• Decision: Defer.

[Jeremy] Custom group model?

• Not implemented in #12795
• Arthur: There wasn't a lot of evidence supporting creating our own submodel, rather do a subclass of the existing group model. Also, Django lacks a get_group_model(). If we did make a custom group model, it might make migration harder down the road.
• Jeremy: AFAIK we only reference the group model from User and maybe from permissions. Will have to dig more but the user model is a primary model whereas the group model is kind of secondary. Django doesn't seem to care much as long as the user has a group. Given that we already have a custom user model which points to whichever group, I don't see this as an issue.
• Dan: We do some customization when we detect the user or the group model in a couple places, and by going to a custom model, we could eliminate that.
• Jeremy: We use a proxy model to get around some limitations in model resolution.
• Jeremy: I'll take a look and share my findings.
• Decision / AI: Jeremy to investigate and share.

[Jeff] Introducing retrospectives to the maintainers call

• Retrospectives are an element of Scrum that are designed to help teams reflect on, and iteratively improve, the way they're working.
• We're not doing full-blown Scrum, and won't be any time soon, but we can borrow and adapt this ceremony. Instead of framing in terms of sprints, which we don't formally observe today, let's frame the time-bounded aspect as "since the last retrospective". Jeff will play the role of Scrum Master as well as Product Owner.
• Retros are team-private, and their outputs will not be captured in the minutes unless the team agrees case by case to share out some decisions.
• Preparation: Think about the things we as a team should:
• ↳ Keep doing
• ↳ Start doing
• ↳ Stop doing
• Decision: Start doing retros at the bottom of the hour of maintainers calls falling on the fourth Thursday of each month, beginning 22 Feb. We'll use reetro since it's familiar to Jeff.

[Jeremy] Further items

• The tom-select work could really use testers. We lack a formal UI QA team at the moment, so please build and install the feature branch and put it through its paces.
• #14237 Clearing dependent <select> fields when changing a parent field: This is another thing that tom-select should make easier.
• #14438 DB representation of scripts: Arthur's work on this issue continues.
• We're really making good progress getting through the 4.0 backlog.
• Getting the Strawberry stuff fully done next week might be ambitious, but if we can stay on target, we'll have most of our milestones knocked out at the halfway point in our development cycle.
• Dan: #14451 Rethink VLAN Modeling, status?
• ↳ Jeremy: It needs an FR issue before we can do anything on it. Feel free to create one
• #14000 is kind of exploratory work, not yet known to be viable or not so we need to investigate.
• If you're playing with the feature branch and notice something that's a little bit off in the UI, please go drop a comment on issue #14871 (with a screenshot if possible). Jeremy will do his best to clean up anything called out there.