Hello all, it’s time for the fortnightly coding standards meeting.

This meeting:
➤ Is for anyone interested in the Drupal coding standards.
➤ Is held on the #coding standards channel in Drupal Slack (see www.drupal.org/slack for information).
➤ Usually happens fortnightly on Tuesday 2100 UTC in Drupal Slack.
➤ Start time alternates between 0900 and 2100.
➤ The meeting open for 24 hours to allow for all timezones.
➤ Discussion is done 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 by adding a comment to the meeting issue.
➤ 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.

Current ping list: @catch, @larowan, @longwave, @quietone
@dww, @borisson_ @longwave @Björn Brala, @Aaron McHale, @Alex Skrypnyk, @Urvashi, @Kingdutch

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.

urvashi_vora Hello:wave:, Myself Urvashi Vora
Kingdutch :wave:
Björn Brala (bbrala) Hi
Alex Skrypnyk Hi all
gapple :wave:

0️⃣.5️⃣ How has the month of August been for you?

urvashi_vora Interesting, as I am learning multiple things simultaneously and also have completed my MBA studies
quietone Congratulations!
urvashi_vora Thank you
quietone For me, it has been unsettling. Unexpected family things. And it has been very wet and cold.
urvashi_vora Ohh... Everything is going to be alright, hope for the best.
Björn Brala (bbrala) Vacation! So pretty good
catch A bit too wet for August.

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

quietone I think we should focus on governance and process stuff again. I am looking for the issues links now
Björn Brala (bbrala) Finishing that up would be great and would help increase our effectiveness, so i agree.
Björn Brala (bbrala) 7️⃣ Coding standards are for the most part automatable conventions. Should we have a rule that standards covered in automation do not need the reflecting docs.

2️⃣ Action items

quietone Finalize https://www.drupal.org/project/coding_standards/issues/3365085

2️⃣.1️⃣ Approve previous minutes

quietone #3380936: Coding Standards Meeting 2023-08-01 2100 UTC
quietone #3375432: Coding Standards Meeting 2023-08-15

3️⃣ Fixed since last meeting

quietone I don't see anything.
quietone I know that I haven't gone through the last minutes or through the issues updated in the last few weeks.

4️⃣ Update on target issue(s)

quietone Still at RTBC
Alex Skrypnyk @quietoneSorry, I'm a bit confuse in which point to add things, so will just choose this one :slightly_smiling_face:
Alex Skrypnyk [#2464123]this is marked ass RTBC, but I do not think it should be RTBC. It requires further discussion based on my last comment and a comment from pfrenssenI'm not sure if I should be changing that status or  coding standards lead should do it.That proposed change is quite a big change - it involves disabling, rather then enhancing the rule, which will affect many projects and teams.
Jonathan1055 I agree with @Alex Skrypnyk that this issue is no longer RTBC. It was set to that status four years ago, and there have been 12 more comments since then. The proposed solution in the issue summary is no longer what might be agreed on.
gapple ++ I attempted an update to the full proposed text from #25 with some changes for clarity based on further feedback.It looks like there's consensus that the rule should be changed, but the exact wording needs agreement before it's really RTBC (edited)
gapple The coder sniff could be moved to the DrupalPractice ruleset as a warning, since it's likely to give false positives
Jonathan1055 Regarding the Coder sniff, I don't see any benefit in moving it into DrupalPractice. Either we can fix the sniff to make it detect and enforce the updated standard, or, if the agreed new standard cannot be programmed (ie it involves the content/context of the type of comment which is not detectable via programming) then we disable and remove the sniff.

5️⃣ Process for adding members

quietone There is an issue where people have put their hand up to be on the committee. #3378689: Add more coding standards maintainers, part II
quietone But we don't have a process for 'appointing' or even what the make up of the group is.
quietone Is there an issue that I have overlooked?
urvashi_vora This is the same issue, I also wanted to get a feedback on, as I am still interested to be a part. Please let me know If anything is to be done from my end
quietone What are you thoughts on things like how many people should be on the committer, what groups the represent etc.
quietone For example, currently all the members are core committers but the group should have representation from other parts of the community.
urvashi_vora It seems reasonable, but I believe diversifying the committee by adding members from different parts other than core committers could be valuable. As different people could bring different perspectives and fresh insights. To successfully include new maintainers who aren't core committers, it's important to approach the decision-making process thoughtfully. Confirming their genuine interest and commitment to active participation is essential, rather than just a temporary involvement.
urvashi_vora However, I would also value getting the opinions of different people within the committee before coming to a certain point.
catch @quietone I believe the process is that the TWG members (currently === the coding standard committee) can just add people to the coding standards committee.
quietone That work for me.
quietone What about what groups are represented on the committee?
quietone Do we want a representative for the Coder project?
Björn Brala (bbrala) I'm not sure if setting a benchmark for that is really something we should be worrying about. If anything I think that most valuable is 2 sets of people; some core maintainers (for connections, and effects on the framework), on the other side, community representation (but also preferably with experience in the php ecosystem outside drupal).
quietone So, that could be a core contributor or a project contributor but they do not need to be a project maintainer.
catch Yeah I also think formal representation isn't the issue, but just generally having active people who aren't core committers would be good. Especially it's about people who work on contrib more than we do.
quietone Then what about group size?
catch That I don't know. Enough to keep things running if people are busy/away but not too many that it results in lots of overhead. I would not really want to go above 12 I guess?
Björn Brala (bbrala) To keep it manageable i would aim at max 7 or something.
Björn Brala (bbrala) ha (edited)
catch I think we will be around 7 if we add the people on that issue, but then that is all the volunteers we have so far. Also I didn't actually count.
Björn Brala (bbrala) If we define a max, I would choose an uneven number btw
quietone Dare I ask. Why?
catch It's easy to contribute without being a maintainer, but we just don't want it to go back down to zero/one for years again and stall.
Björn Brala (bbrala) If there is a vote, you cannot have a deadlock then :stuck_out_tongue:
Björn Brala (bbrala) Might be a moot point though, but have seen that go wrong in some of the groups i have been in
quietone That assumes the group will use voting for decision making. I don't think we have made that decision.
Björn Brala (bbrala) Yeah i know, just thinking ahead if there is a lot of discussion ona  topic you could end up with 'a majority is for'
catch More likely that stuff we disagree on gets indefinitely deferred :wink:
Björn Brala (bbrala) hahahaha
Björn Brala (bbrala) Unfortunately very very true
quietone Well, that is why I advocate for consensus decision making along with a time frame for decisions.
catch But for me I am more interested in getting stuff through that's uncontroversial, just that has been incredibly hard so far.
Björn Brala (bbrala) yeah
quietone Yea, there is enough to do with getting a system restarted.
Björn Brala (bbrala) We could just adopt some psr's or symfony standards with a few differences and have to think less way less of cs rules :wink:
Björn Brala (bbrala) (80% kidding there)
quietone I am not sure where to document agreements on this. The project page seems the best option right now.
catch Someone suggested that but both we and Symfony left PHP-FIG, so for me not happening.
catch Also we have infinitely more standards than either afaik.
Björn Brala (bbrala) Not sure that the fact we have more standards is a good thing. And sure, the PHP-FIG debacle makes those things a little harder. Im sorry to derail this one a little, this discussion i started here is offtopic for this thread.
catch fwiw I think it's good that the current RTBC issues are loosening standards a bit.
catch Some of them made sense for procedural code, but not for classes and especially not PHP 8.
Björn Brala (bbrala) yes
Björn Brala (bbrala) Things will get better also because of this group working again so we should be less stuck in the past going forwards.

6️⃣ The coding standards process, as on the project page

quietone This is the issue  #3365085: Update the coding standards process on the project page
quietone I am hoping we can spend this month discussing this one in this meeting or in Slack. And then in one month (or sooner) approve the changes.
quietone I am suggesting one month just to give us a time frame to get this done.
catch Yeah would be good to update this, we can always tweak it again later too.
quietone @catch, can you add suggested wording for your comment in #7 of the issue?
catch Had a go: #3365085: Update the coding standards process on the project page#comment-15211565
quietone Thanks that helps. Thankfully, it is not a complicated decision tree.
quietone I added that to the IS
Alex Skrypnyk Left my comment #3365085: Update the coding standards process on the project page#comment-15212553

7️⃣ Coding standards are for the most part automatable conventions. Should we have a rule that standards covered in automation do not need the reflecting docs.

Björn Brala (bbrala) I have this feeling that we are duplicating a lot of effort to have docs that fully reflect the standard when a lot of those are covered by automation. Why do we need to document those things twice? That feels like a way to make maintaining the standards harder.
quietone Interesting idea. But I don't see how it is documenting twice, in that documentation is not code.
Björn Brala (bbrala) Sure documentation is not code, and there is merit in documenting things outside rules that verify standards.In the long run though, it would be great if the drupal coding standard could shrink. I would be extremely happy if we work towards needing less and less documentation.If you look at frameworks like Symfony and Laravel, those coding standards are way more standard with only some specifics. (https://symfony.com/doc/current/contributing/code/standards.html https://laravel.com/docs/5.0/contributions#:~:text=be%20promptly%20addre....)I think it would be a really really good long term goal to find ways to minimize the load on the community to get coding standards right and moving and not describing things that have been automated in docs could be a way to work towards that.
Björn Brala (bbrala) To be very honest, I would love to see Drupal at some point adopt more established coding standard used in the community, with a relatively small set of exceptions where we feel that is really needed. But I know that is not realisitic in the short term.
quietone Points taken. But it is challenging when we don't follow PSRs.
quietone Certainly some long term goals here.
Björn Brala (bbrala) Yeah i know we cannot do this right now, and there is not even the governace ready to discuss this properly
Björn Brala (bbrala) So no worries, but i will be repeating this once in a while and see what would be an oppertune time to have this discussion proper.
Alex Skrypnyk @Björn Brala (bbrala)sorry, I do not understand what exactly this point is about

As a developer, I want to be able to see documentation for rules of every language we are using in DrupalI also want to see code examples that follow those rules.

A page like this is very valuable in teams, because people can reference specific parts when communicating.https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/standards/php/php-coding-standards

I agree that manually supporting documentation while we have rules in Coder feels like a duplication of efforts. I would suggest to automate documentation building from the comments of the rules defined in Coder. this would allow to have consistent docs in Coder's codebase and public documentation built out of it and no more manual documentation updates.Drupal API site is built out the Drupal codebase. And it works :slightly_smiling_face:
Alex Skrypnyk As for "ours" vs "theirs" standards - this is a bit subjective - I like "ours" more :slightly_smiling_face:
gapple ++ 
As a developer, I want to be able to see documentation for rules of every language we are using in DrupalI also want to see code examples that follow those rules.
gapple There's also instances where the coder rules have had bugs or been stricter than the written code styles, and having the styles documented (and the discussion where they were implemented) was necessary to correctly adjust the automated coder rules.

8️⃣ @quietone appreciation thread for pulling this train forwards and getting us here

Björn Brala (bbrala) :heart:

Comments

quietone created an issue. See original summary.

quietone credited alex.skrypnyk.

quietone credited bbrala.

quietone credited catch.

quietone credited gapple.

quietone credited jonathan1055.

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quietone commented
Issue summary: View changes
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quietone commented
Issue summary: View changes
Status: Active » Needs review
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quietone commented
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quietone commented
Issue summary: View changes

Copy conversation '5' again.

urvashi_vora’s picture

urvashi_vora commented

Verified. I think all points are covered now. Thanks @quietone.

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quietone commented

@urvashi_vora, pointed out in Slack that I missed giving them credit. Doing so now.

urvashi_vora’s picture

urvashi_vora commented
Status: Needs review » Fixed

Thanks @quietone.

The meeting notes match the conversation in Slack.

Hence marking it as Fixed.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.