Tracking suggestions for articles to accompany Mirage 3 release

[GemmaG]

@amirmc has suggested the 23rd Feb for the Mirage press release and announcement (based on #592) which is next Thursday.

Not all of these need to be ready for 23rd - and they don't need to be long posts - but it would be good to know which ones could be finished before then and linked to from the announcement post. Please do add suggestions and edits.

From the OCL side, we are working on some posts covering:

• build system shift: specifically topkg (@dbuenzli). See the post on OCL
• documentation: odoc (@lpw25 + @avsm who deployed http://docs.mirage.io) -> likely to be a post to accompany odoc release in coming weeks, not with mirage release.
• opam2 beta details: (@avsm / @samoht)

We plan to put these posts on ocamllabs.io which can federated to mirage.io.

From the Mirage-specific side, would anyone like to write on the following? (authors are just suggestions)

• CI (@avsm)
• solo5 additions?
• logging
• irmin 1.0 (@samoht) , vpnkit (@djs55)
• ARM (@mor1)

It would also be good to reference Sean’s CUFP talk which relates to some of the OPAM 2 changes - he raised some great points, and it looks we have solved at least a few of them.

Schedule

Upcoming posts — Check off when published

• Fri 24 Feb? — Short post/paragraph about topkg that links to the OCL post Already mentioned in the release post
• Mon 27 Feb — Blog post on how MirageOS 3 got smaller and less magical (@hannesm) add size matters blog post #533
• Wed 1 Mar — QubesOS target (@yomimono) Qubes target #534
• Fri 3 Mar — Irmin 1.0 (@samoht) Add post for Irmin 1.0 #535

[hannesm]

• some unikernel statistics between 2.9.1 and 3.0.0 (diff between generated main.ml for unix and xen, diffs of config.ml and unikernel.ml) at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~hm519/mirage-2.9.1-3.0.0-diffs/
• https://gist.github.com/hannesm/d0601b7d48d527068c354bc9e1daba3f (which can be improved (suggestions welcome), integrated into @yomimono announcement, or posted at some point on its own) :) -- this also refers to the statistics

[mor1]

I can write / link to something very short about ARM (though there's not much that's Mirage-specific I think). But no chance before tomorrow evening, and Wednesday afternoon more likely.

@hannesm I think that post would make a great post (or two!) on its own, to be referred to by @yomimono announcement :) Part of the thought here was to try to replicate what we did for Mirage 2 in terms of having several posts about the improvements in the beta leading up to the (now very close) release date. Could maybe have two posts in fact, splitting at the section https://gist.github.com/hannesm/d0601b7d48d527068c354bc9e1daba3f#workflow-phase-separation-versioned-opam-dependencies ... ?

@talex5 @samoht Any chance you'd be able to put something together about errors? (I know it's not the scheme you were originally proposing.) Perhaps collating from the considerable text that seems to be attached on various issues...?

@avsm @GemmaG what is git-delve? Could also add short posts onto the Mirage site pointing at the topkg and odoc posts when they're up perhaps? (Maybe also OPAM2?)

[yomimono]

@hannesm, I really like this piece! It should definitely be its own post which gets linked from the high-level outline. We could split it in two, but I think it's at a good granularity as-is.

@samoht, do you have time/interest in writing something on errors over the next couple of days? talex5 already declined in another medium. I think I'm probably next-best to do it after samoht, and also about to be on a flight, but I'm unlikely to do both that and an update guide today.

[amirmc]

I don't think there's enough time to do the necessary review and edits to get these posts up before the release (as we did for MirageOS 2.0, which was an epic effort), but it would be great to get these suggestions into an an order/schedule to continue the activity into the following week. That would work really well!

[mort]

Hi, guys.

If you could put a bit of care on not mentioning me (@mort) by mistake, that would be awesome. Remember it's @mor1 who you want ;)

Cheers!

[amirmc]

Manuel, really sorry about this! I'm sure you already know this but I think you'll have to manually unsubscribe yourself from this thread to avoid ongoing notifications.
I can't see a way to remove you :-/

[yomimono]

@amirmc I think Manuel's just asking us to be a bit more careful in the future, not to take any action now.

@GemmaG I just realized that missing from the list of things to write from the Mirage side is a porting guide for Mirage 2 -> Mirage 3; I'm listed (with a ? that should be a ! by now) as responsible for that over at mirage/mirage#592 .

[amirmc]

I don't think there's enough time to do the necessary review and edits to get these posts up before the release...

What I meant by the comment above is that I think we should have a sequence of posts, no more than one per day (ideally one every couple of days), that starts with the release blog post. I hope that makes sense.

[samoht]

@yomimono I will write a short port tomorrow about errors. I also really would like to get some kind of Irmin pre-release ready for the 23rd :-)

[yomimono]

@samoht great, thank you! feel free to leave TODOs for me in the post if that would be helpful.

[yomimono]

@hannesm A commit with annoying English nitpicks and an irritating TODO inserted is at https://gist.github.com/yomimono/ff58bcc483ba5fe0aab323e6ea24a492 .

[hannesm]

@yomimono thanks! mirage itself contains available: [ocaml-version >= "4.02.3"] (while functoria contains >= "4.03" - but I don't remember which bits actually require 4.03).

[samoht]

The error handling post is there: #514 Anyone can push to it, so please feel free to edit.

[GemmaG]

@hannesm thanks for the great post on removing code - I agree that mentioning it in the announcement but leaving as is works well :)
@samoht thanks for the error post! An Irmin post would be brilliant!
@yomimono I've added the porting guide to the list - thanks!

Unlikely to have an odoc post until release in a few weeks - Leo suggested we could mention an upcoming release of the new documentation tool and point to the generated docs at: http://docs.mirage.io/ as a bit of a teaser.

[amirmc]

Hi folks, this issue and the tracking issue (mirage/mirage#592) were getting confusing.

This issue (#513) should track the supporting content that will go out after the main announcements. I've updated the top post and added some items so that they're tracked here instead.

TL;DR. If it's required for the announcement, it should be over on mirage/mirage#592. If it's due out after that, it's here.

[dbuenzli]

We plan to put these posts on ocamllabs.io which can federated to mirage.io.

Please make sure to fix the certificate error before, 98% of potential readers won't bother going through the painful process of circumventing it.

build system shift: specifically topkg (@dbuenzli)

I wrote something here:

https://gist.github.com/dbuenzli/fb2ac8583c9b0ff1637ee3117195cda5

Comments welcome.

[GemmaG]

@dbuenzli thanks! Do you have a title in mind? We've got ocamllabs.io up and running now, so I'll add it as a post there with you as the author.

One suggestion I might have is that some people might not know what you are referring to when you say "left-pad/left-padist" - can you elaborate?

Thoughts on linking to it directly from the main announcement post?

[amirmc]

Just read that post and it made me laugh. But then I know some of the left-pad references :)
If there's a summary to link to, maybe that can be referenced in a foot note. e.g. something like https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/4bo951/eli5_this_whole_fiasco_with_javascript_node_and/

[GemmaG]

@dbuenzli I've added your post here: http://ocamllabs.io/projects/2017/02/23/topkg.html with a working title that we can alter to your preference. I wanted to post it now so that we can link to it from the main announcement - thanks!

[dbuenzli]

@dbuenzli I've added your post here: http://ocamllabs.io/projects/2017/02/23/topkg.html

Thanks @GemmaG. Could please integrate the latest revision of the gist, I integrated some comments @pqwy made to me. Other than that:

1. I think the title you added is good.
2. It seems you turned an opam into OPAM. opam recently became uncapitalized.
3. the (1) in topkg-bistro(1) was not a footnote it was a man section. I turned it in a tool invocation, could you please remove the footnote.
4. I turned a few topkg into topkg as the links in typewriter are not clearly visible when typeset on the blog.

Thanks !

[dbuenzli]

Ah and regarding the left-pad allusion I don't mind people not getting it. Those who don't and are curious enough can search about it. In general I avoid hyperlinking away in blog posts, as these links are only opportunities to distract and loose your reader.

[dbuenzli]

Also @GemmaG could you please remove the "has a Master of Science in Computer Science from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and" from the short bio on the blog, I don't think it's really interesting in that context. The sentence that will result be enough. Thanks.

[yomimono]

I can commit to a blog post on the Qubes target for Tuesday 28, if there's interest in that.

[amirmc]

I've added a section at the end of the top post where we can build a schedule. So far, the only content we have is the 'topkg' post and the 'smaller is better' post.

Is anyone else working on content? @GemmaG, are you handling the scheduling?

[amirmc]

I can commit to a blog post on the Qubes target for Tuesday 28.

@yomimono Thanks! I've added it to the schedule but for Weds 1st. We should leave a day between posts just so it's not overwhelming. One of the items of (anecdotal) feedback for the 2.0 blog posts was that the frequency of posts was too high to keep up with :)

[dbuenzli]

My comments in #513 (comment) are implemented in PR ocamllabs/ocamllabs-www#5 I'll let someone with the rights to merge it.

[GemmaG]

@amirmc re schedule, odoc post will be coming in next few weeks (dependent on final work on odoc before release - no specific date yet), I'll look into when an opam beta post could be ready

[samoht]

I am writing a post for Irmin 1.0. Can do it for Friday 3rd if no one else is taking that slot.

[yomimono]

I'd appreciate any comments folks have time to leave on #534, which was originally going to be a personal blog post and so might be a bit chatty for the Mirage blog (and also is probably boring? Please tell me if you have ideas on how to make it less boring).

[mor1]

LGTM! I think the style is just fine myself. The only part where I stumbled was when/how Functoria suddenly appears -- eg., the relationship between Functoria and Mirage when it comes to the `base_configurable` object and so on. It might also be useful to include a pointer somewhere to how object syntax works perhaps? It seems to be little used so even OCaml programmers might want easy to access docs. Perhaps also change the title -- this is more about adding a target to Mirage than it is about QubesOS per se to my mind...

…

On 28 February 2017 at 18:52, Mindy Preston ***@***.***> wrote: I'd appreciate any comments folks have time to leave on #534 <#534>, which was originally going to be a personal blog post and so might be a bit chatty for the Mirage blog (and also is probably boring? Please tell me if you have ideas on how to make it less boring). — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#513 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAKP4IhGymKosBCp8F_EO9FvqntFpqfWks5rhGzrgaJpZM4MFBFY> .

-- Richard Mortier mort@cantab.net

[samoht]

See #535 which is definitely not fully ready yet, but which contains a skeleton of what I wanted to write. Early feedback to that early draft is welcome.

[yomimono]

@samoht - I forked and added some comments at https://github.com/yomimono/mirage-www/tree/irmin - please feel free to pull or ignore or whatever.

[yomimono]

I think we've written all of the release-related MirageOS 3 blog posts we're going to write.