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**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** Yes. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. Well, that is a great complement, and working as expected in this case, it's great; and sometimes even rare. Obviously, not all software works as expected, that's why I mention this. And when it does, like "Oh, yes! Everything works as it should", and it's great, and it feels great. So you were ... |
I know the answer to this, but I know that many listeners will be wondering... First of all, is RabbitMQ using hot code reloading? |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** No, it's not. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** And the follow-up - why not? |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** It's quite difficult to manage. The first part is that all developers and all contributions to the RabbitMQ code might lead to changes which don't look as breaking changes when you think of a single instance of your Erlang VM, for instance; you stop the service, you load the code from the dis... |
\[48:10\] And it gets even more complicated when you're having a cluster of Erlang VMs. So you have to take care of the fact that, for instance, an Erlang process, while the code is reloaded, will modify its own state, and will start to use inter-process messages with a newer structure. When I say "message", in this co... |
You have to handle all those changes live, so that new process which was reloaded might receive new messages using the new format from process on that same node, but it might receive all the messages from a node which was not yet upgraded, and so on. So that part is quite difficult to handle, and if you have mistakes, ... |
And the second part which is difficult is how to package that... Because Erlang was designed so that in the end you do not ship just the RabbitMQ Erlang applications, for instance; it was designed so that you ship the Erlang VM itself, the Erlang code you want to run on it, and the configuration. In the end, it's an ap... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I remembered that -- this just reminds me of a discussion that we had a few years back about this very subject... And it's interesting how it comes back again. I remember the plugin system in RabbitMQ being one of the challenges when it comes to packaging RabbitMQ in an Erlang release, being able to d... |
\[52:03\] So the one thing that helped (I think) in recent years is containers. Containerizing RabbitMQ, having that tarball, which really used to be the Debian package, now it's called something else... FreeBSD jail - similar concept. So the container allows us to package Erlang, even the operating system... Because t... |
And then on top of that, obviously, if you use something like Kubernetes, you want a cluster operator, or an operator that manages your deployments, which is especially important if you have a clustered stateful system such as RabbitMQ, or a distributed stateful system. In those cases it really helps. |
And this just made me realize that one discussion which I would really like to have is with \[unintelligible 00:52:58.19\] about the cluster operator, and how RabbitMQ runs in the context of Kubernetes... Because I think it does a lot of thing really well, being a stateful distributed system on Kubernetes; that's chall... |
And I think the new tools made this problem easier from some perspectives, but they also made it harder from others... And adapting to the new world - it's very challenging. I think a lot of this is lost in the details, and it's important because many can learn from this, many stateful systems can learn from this. And ... |
Okay, so I would say that my understanding is that you miss this hot code reloading from the olden days, that RabbitMQ doesn't have, and there are some practical limitations why it will be very difficult to implement. Not impossible, but very challenging. Is there anything else that you miss? |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** No, I think that's something I would love to see in RabbitMQ, and even though it's difficult, I don't think it's impossible. For instance, if we were to ship only bug fixes into our batch versions, then it would be pretty easy to have that hot code reloading. The way you describe it in Erlang... |
So I think if we were to have only bug fixes in batch releases, we could have hot code reloading implemented, and it would not add a lot of load to our team, I think. That is achievable, and a great benefit from that is that upgrading RabbitMQ to the next patch release means you don't have to restart RabbitMQ, which me... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Well, I've really enjoyed this discussion, JSP. |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** Yeah, me too. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Thank you for joining me. It was great fun. I'm looking forward to the next one... And I'm wondering if there's any closing thoughts that you have? |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** Yeah, so I would like to know in fact what people are doing in their job or their personal projects to ship what they produce. Do they have experience with various release engineering practices, and what works and didn't work for them. I would love to hear from their writing software, but I w... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** So if you're a FreeBSD user or a RabbitMQ user, let JSP know what you like about the release engineering, what don't you like, and what would you like to be better, and what does even better mean for you. He would enjoy, and I would enjoy as well, knowing about that. |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** Yeah, we will both benefit from the answer. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Well, this was fun, JSP. Thank you very much. See you next time. |
**Jean-Sébastien Pedron:** Yeah. Thank you for the invitation. |
• Importance of good release engineering for core infrastructure |
• Jean-Sébastien Padron's experience as a contributor to RabbitMQ and FreeBSD |
• Challenges of debugging complex systems with multiple software versions |
• The role of communication in release engineering, especially for open-source projects |
• Benefits of good release engineering, including improved user satisfaction and feedback |
• Importance of making money in open-source projects |
• Challenges and risks associated with release engineering for RabbitMQ |
• Definition and characteristics of core infrastructure components (RabbitMQ as an example) |
• Comparison between RabbitMQ and FreePSD (operating system) regarding release engineering |
• Examples of failed release engineering efforts (RabbitMQ security bug fix/ break-in change, FreeBSD 5.0 release cycle) |
• Trade-offs between shipping a new version quickly vs. taking time to stabilize the code base |
• Importance of timely software releases and updates |
• Impact on user confidence and willingness to consume future changes |
• Relationship between release engineering and user happiness |
• Comparison of RabbitMQ and FreeBSD as core infrastructure |
• Considerations for companies using these systems (e.g. cars, gaming, streaming) |
• Real-life example of a customer issue with RabbitMQ in Paris |
• RabbitMQ is involved in message exchange between car and key |
• Importance of core infrastructure, such as RabbitMQ, being transparent but often overlooked |
• Teleport Access Plane for unified access to computing resources |
• Release engineering process for FreePST, including fixed interval between major releases and minor releases |
• Use of a calendar tool for release planning, including code freeze, beta releases, and final release dates |
• Importance of communication and flexibility in the release process |
• The FreeBSD release engineering process was introduced after FreeBSD 5 and has undergone changes to adjust the timeframe between releases for easier user understanding. |
• The FreeBSD calendar is published on the FreeBSD.org website and announced on mailing lists, providing a clear schedule of upcoming releases. |
• The development process takes place in an internal Git repository hosted by FreeBSD, with read-only mirrors available on GitHub; there are discussions about introducing alternative tools like GitLab. |
• The community can communicate with developers through various mailing lists focused on specific topics or branches. |
• Users can participate in FreeBSD development by finding tasks on the Bugzilla bug tracker or solving problems they encounter while using FreeBSD. |
• Submissions for patches can be made through pull requests on GitHub, mailing lists, or Bugzilla after opening an issue. |
• Release cycle and timeline for FreeBSD |
• Differences in versioning between FreeBSD and other operating systems |
• Principles of Least Astonishment (POLA) in FreeBSD release engineering |
• Importance of compatibility and deprecation in major releases |
• Timeline for major and minor releases in FreeBSD |
• Comparison to RabbitMQ's current release engineering process |
• Inspiration from other open-source projects, including Darktable and Mesa library |
• Distributed team meetings and challenges with graphics drivers |
• Discussion of FreeBSD and its stability in comparison to other systems |
• Importance of balancing shipping updates quickly with ensuring software stability |
• Challenges of testing graphics drivers on various hardware configurations |
• Shift from including graphics drivers in the core FreeBSD source code to packaging them separately |
• Software development process involving testing, feedback, and updates |
• Importance of communication with contributors and users in release engineering |
• Limiting the impact of mistakes and being honest about them |
• AirLong (Yoz) web server used for a previous project |
• Hot code reloading feature of AirLong |
• Packaging Debian packages for the service |
• RabbitMQ software development process, lack of hot code reloading |
• RabbitMQ code changes can be problematic if not handled correctly |
• Migration from state V1 to V2 requires careful handling |
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