Coding Standards Meeting 2022-06-07 2100 UTC [#3282227]

Hello all, it’s time for the fortnightly coding standards meeting. The meeting will take place in slack in various threads
This meeting:
➤ Is for anyone interested in the Drupal coding standards.
➤ Usually happens fortnightly on Tuesday 2100 UTC. The meeting open for 24 hours to allow for all timezones.
➤ Is done on the #coding standards channel in Drupal Slack (see www.drupal.org/slack for information).
➤ Happens in threads, which you can follow to be notified of new replies even if you don’t comment in the thread. You may also join the meeting later and participate asynchronously!
➤ Has a public agenda anyone can add to. See the parent issue for an idea of the typical agenda.
➤A transcript will be made using drupal-meeting-parser and posted to the agenda issue. For anonymous comments, start with a :bust_in_silhouette: emoji. To take a comment or thread off the record, start with a :no_entry_sign: emoji.

Standing items

Who is here?
What should we talk about today? Suggest topics here and I will add threads. I will also check for comments on the issue for today's meeting.
Action Items
Approve previous minutes
Wrap up

Project issues

Core Coding Standards issues
Coding Standards project issue
Coder project issues

0️⃣ Who is here today? Comment in the thread to introduce yourself. We’ll keep the meeting open for 24 hours to allow for all timezones.

quietone	Hi!
dww	Derek @ TEN7
Björn Brala (bbrala)	Björn, hello
borisson_	Joris, hello
longwave	hello!

0️⃣.5️⃣ What do you do to relax?

quietone	Walk and/or hangout in the park watching the clouds.
dww	Play music, walk in nature, do Self-Breema or Breema Bodywork (www.breema.com), listen to music...
Björn Brala (bbrala)	Hmm, so many things. Reading is one of them :)
borisson_	biking

1️⃣ Do you have suggested topics you are looking to discuss? Post in this thread and we’ll open threads for them as appropriate.

2️⃣ how do we want to organize ourselves and the work? To make progress on core issue and coding standard issues?

quietone	Can we select some core issues to focus on getting committed in the next minor?
quietone	For coding s standards, maybe pick an issue to discuss each meeting?
dww	Personally, I'm still unclear on governance stuff for this effort. My impression is that the coding standards queue is paralyzed from lack of ability to make any formal decisions.
dww	I don't know that that's changed. Maybe the point here is to generate some activity such that things start moving, anyway, even if we're not acknowledged as having any authority to make any decisions. :sweat_smile:
quietone	Good reminder about the governance. That is correct, we are the 'unofficial coding standards committee' so need to be aware that we can not make final decisions in the coding standards issue queue.However, I do think that if we can make high quality activity there and that will lead to a response on the governance issue.
quietone	Even aside from that there are oodles of core CS issues to work through. Including one I should have monitored to get into 9.4 beta and missed.
dww	Do you wanna open 5️⃣ for that issue, so we have something concrete to focus on?
dww	The longer-term CS issue I'd love to make progress on is #1539712: [policy, no patch] Coding standards for breaking function calls and language constructs across lines, just over 10 years and running.
dww	But, I have no idea how to move that forward in the current circumstances, really.
dww	So yeah, I'd love to hear more about your thoughts on how we can help these issues that are basically blocked / stuck, if we have no formal authority. I suppose we can try to generate more activity, refine issue summaries, summarize debates, etc, and make it easier for people who do have authority to make decisions.
dww	Just opened 6️⃣ for this so we can discuss that one more specifically.
quietone	As I understand it the Coding Standards Committee was a sub group of the Technical Working Group, although mostly the same folks. The TWG is now one person, the only person with authority.
quietone	I think the way to make progress is to demonstrate our commitment and quality of work by triaging the issues and doing as much as we can within the confines of not having authority. I can image that after triaging, many issues could wind up postponed waiting for action from the official Coding Standards Committee. (edited)
dww	Sounds good. I'm willing to try. :sweat_smile:

3️⃣ How long should the meeting run, 30 minutes or 1 hour?

dww	Probably doesn't matter much. It's not like this channel is bursting with traffic and we need to end the official meeting "on time" to get on with other things...
dww	So I'd say at least 1 hour for the formal meeting time, but happy to be flexible.
Björn Brala (bbrala)	Our timezone challenges might make that hard, and yeah not sure it is that relevant. An hour should be fine.

4️⃣ Who would like an alternate meeting start time to suit other timezones?

dww	This time works for me, but I'm happy to have other times if they work better for other folks.
Björn Brala (bbrala)	I might be in bed already at this time a lot of days, but let's keep it for now. Alignment and focus might be best for now. If we work together on a few issues we might be able to pull the most into a finished state
borisson_	I agree with bjorn here, this is a difficult time for me as well, but as long as it's async that doesn't really matter
longwave	yeah it is difficult for me to commit to any regular time really but the 24h format works well as i can usually jump in somewhere

5️⃣ Proposal: Have this ready 9.5 beta #3264947: [Sep 12, 2022] Add missing docblocks for test methods ::setUp() and ::tearDown()

dww	Looks like a reasonable place to start. Now following. Thanks for the link!
borisson_	requeued the test
longwave	i don't know why Wim moved this forward while there were 3 days left and there were only minor issues :confused:

6️⃣ What can we do to move #1539712: [policy, no patch] Coding standards for breaking function calls and language constructs across lines forward in the absence of any formal governance authority?

dww	It's mostly blocked on anyone with authority to make a decision. It was basically ready to go 10 years ago. :sweat_smile: Although there are some newer comments with slightly different proposals that could be assessed, incorporated into the summary, etc.
dww	My sense is that it's already too big and complicated to ever land. Someone (I forget now who) pointed out that adding ~ a dozen new rules for this isn't likely to make anyone happy.
dww	So ideally there's a way to simplify the hell out of it and make it easier to read, understand, and reason about.
dww	(without 3 pages of SHOULD and MUST clauses) :joy:
quietone	I saw a comment that maybe it needs to be split into smaller steps.
dww	Perhaps, yeah. Although 4 issues that each add 5 new rules isn't necessarily much better than 1 adding 20. But at least if we focus on 5 rules for 1 part of it, it might actually happen, instead of discussing it for another decade.
quietone	In the end, I reckon we will get to a point where it is all tidied up and the IS states clearly that it is postponed on a specific action by CS committee. (edited)
dww	Sounds good.
quietone	So maybe in a few months (since we are all busy) we can demonstrate that we have regular meetings, are establishing a workflow, making progress in the CS issue queue etc and can then again ask for a review of the governance issue to add people to the CS committee.
borisson_	I didn't read the entire issue yet, but can we copy some of the language of what the psr coding standards about this say?
longwave	agree that this one needs splitting into smaller steps or it will just remain stalled imo