[Engineering] (no justification provided)

Chad Horohoe chorohoe at wikimedia.org
Fri Sep 1 01:23:25 UTC 2017


Hi,

I hope you were confused by my incredibly vague subject line. That's the
point ;-)

As you're probably aware, whenever you do something with scap, it sends log
entries off to the SAL. This is great because it lets us help build a
history of what was deployed when--absolutely crucial when we're trying to
figure out why something started breaking. What I think people might not
know is that these deployment log entries can contain custom text provided
by you the deployer. Here's a few samples chosen from the last couple of
days:

```
20:03 demon at tin: rebuilt wikiversions.php and synchronized wikiversions
files: (no justification provided)
19:27 mattflaschen at tin: Finished scap: Watchlist filters: Convert edit
watchlist button to new UX and fix server-side tag filtering. T172030
(duration: 21m 23s)
19:05 mattflaschen at tin: Started scap: Watchlist filters: Convert edit
watchlist button to new UX and fix server-side tag filtering. T172030
20:16 ayounsi at tin: Finished deploy [librenms/librenms at 5fea59c]: (no
justification provided) (duration: 00m 05s)
20:16 ayounsi at tin: Started deploy [librenms/librenms at 5fea59c]: (no
justification provided)
18:43 aaron at tin: Synchronized
php-1.30.0-wmf.15/includes/jobqueue/jobs/HTMLCacheUpdateJob.php: 2d83569397
- Fix old regression in HTMLCacheUpdate de-duplication (duration: 00m 44s)
```

See how useful those are? But wait, what's with the (no justification
provided)...that's basically useless! You're right. And I forget sometimes
too. But I think a lot of people might not realize that this is the case.
Basically the way it works is whatever text you type after your scap
command is used as the message text. For example:

```
# scap sync-file foo.php This is an awesome file everyone needs
# scap deploy -v Nobody wants this code anyway, undeploying
```

This e-mail is not meant to shame anyone (or shame equally? I did include
myself...), but merely as a pointer to a feature that I think is getting
underused. In the last couple of months I count at least 250 deployments
that lack a reason. I think we can do better :)

Have a great Friday!

-Chad
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