add proposal for rewrite of vela ui

[JayCeeJr]

add proposal for rewrite of vela ui

[ryanmr]

Hi all,

I've been working with @JayCeeJr and @zapplebee on this before and during our 2023 Summer Vela Hackathon time.

Here's the rendered text for easier reading.

I am very happy to make any changes or answer questions.

Thanks for having us.

[chrispdriscoll]

I don't think this fits into a specific section but is referenced in a couple places - my personal thought is this will still require a lot of time and energy from Target. After just completing 12 months of rewrites to the security posture, I'm a bit exhausted with rewrites and would love to focus our energy on new capabilities. Scheduled Builds was driven by Cargill and I observed a lot of energy from Target for us to get through the security work and back into new development.

Perhaps my philosophical question is: is now the time to do this? Rewrite exhaustion might be a good reason to postpone but the more direct question is: what criteria should we use to identify when a component of the tech stack should be rewritten?

[ryanmr]

I don't think this fits into a specific section but is referenced in a couple places - my personal thought is this will still require a lot of time and energy from Target. After just completing 12 months of rewrites to the security posture, I'm a bit exhausted with rewrites and would love to focus our energy on new capabilities. Scheduled Builds was driven by Cargill and I observed a lot of energy from Target for us to get through the security work and back into new development.

So far this effort is primarily on the Cargill side. We can certainly do our due diligence in regards to churn, security, and rewrite fatigue. We hope that this change also opens the ui up for new development too, more readily even.

Perhaps my philosophical question is: is now the time to do this? Rewrite exhaustion might be a good reason to postpone but the more direct question is: what criteria should we use to identify when a component of the tech stack should be rewritten?

Rewrite exhaustion may be a good reason to defer this concept for now. There is definitely a balance between churn and new development. That said, as the folks on the recent vela call discussed, we can approach docs and onboarding materials first, or later, but these concepts are coupled either way.

[chrispdriscoll]

Rewrite exhaustion may be a good reason to defer this concept for now.

The more I've looked into the maintenance side of React, the more I'd really like us to have more core functionality in place before we add another layer of maintenance. React updates will take away from our new feature development so let's be sure we keep a long lens on the costs and benefits of this switch.

[chrispdriscoll]

On August 2, we met to discuss and layout a plan going forward. The following Action Items and timeline were agreed...

Next Steps 1. Refactor one page in Elm to common patterns 2. Compare with React rewrite 3. Add Comments/Documentation around Elm codebase 4. Identify tips/tricks on Elm plugins and how to setup machine for Elm development

Timeline: Target would like to focus on getting v0.21 and v0.22 released externally and internally before our Q4 Freeze (early Oct). We'd like to pick this up after the v0.22 release. (this has been updated on the roadmap and queued for November) https://github.com/orgs/go-vela/projects/13

Parallel effort: Develop proposal for revisiting the Tech Stack

[ryanmr]

Hi all,

Thanks for all your work on this thread. Please feel free to update the PR with any appropriate status you feel is necessary for organization, or feel free to close this while other work proceeds.