Status update?

[calumapplepie]

As you know, Python 2 is officially obsolete: no new security fixes are coming. Of course, MoinMoin 1.9 can still be run, and Python 2 will still be supported via Debian Buster for about 2.5 more years. But it would obviously be preferable to have a chance to migrate to Moinmoin 2 before 1.9 becomes unrunnable, so when do you anticipate that being possible? It's been at least six months since any of your outward-facing docs have been updated: over a year for the readme. I wanted to ask you folks some questions, so I could build a better picture of the status of moin2 and update the docs to reflect that.

• Do you still consider Moin2 to be unstable and unsuitable for production?
• When you say "unstable", do you mean "probably won't run", "risk of potential data corruption/crashes", or "we just haven't done enough testing yet to be sure"?
• Development seems to have slowed down a lot: what have you accomplished and what remains to be done?
• Are you in desperate need of more people, or do you think you'll be able to get a 'stable' release out in the next year or two with who you currently have?
• When a release is ready, how hard will it be to migrate existing MoinMoin 1.9 wiki's to 2.0?

TL; DR: What is MoinMoin2's current status, how long until that status is "stable", and what has been achieved/remains to be achieved?

[ThomasWaldmann]

It's ready when it is ready.

As long as there are only 1.1 developers (1 == @RogerHaase, 0.1 == me [currently]) working on it, it will take long.

We are mostly working on the code, so you need to rather look at that than at docs changes.

It's not finished, it's not released, so there is no support for running moin2 for prod sites or for any current or future data migration or other issues you might run into by doing that.

If you are a python developer and you can deal with installation and any such issues on your own, of course you can give it a try and also you can help with testing / developing it.

See the github issue tracker for the TODO (there are a lot of open known issues, maybe also some unknown ones).

Yes, we need more active developers working on it.

We already have some import code for 1.9 -> 2.0, but it might be not perfect yet. See moin import....

[calumapplepie]

Okay, thank you!
You can close this issue if you want.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Keeping it open, guess more people have same questions...

[pabs3]

It might be a good idea to add a label like release-2.0 to the issues that you consider mandatory to fix before 2.0 can be released.

[pabs3]

... so that folks who are interested in helping out know what to focus on.

[ThomasWaldmann]

@pabs3 we use this: https://github.com/moinwiki/moin/milestones

[ClaasTeichmann]

@ThomasWaldmann @RogerHaase I really appreciate your work on MoinMoin2! Thanks a million!!
As the support of Python2 is ending in June together with RHEL and CentOS v7, I am forced by our IT-department to use Python3 only.
Do you see a chance to have a usable release of Moin2 in the coming months? (We use it only for manually registered users so far).
I could already test the migration of our wikis and write bug-reports, if this makes sense.
(Probably other users are in the same situation as I am)
All the best :-)

[ThomasWaldmann]

I have to admit that I have been rather idle regarding moin recently, but Roger, Ulrich and some other contributors are working on it!

[UlrichB22]

@ClaasTeichmann It is worth trying to migrate and test existing wikis. We would appreciate your feedback on migration issues, missing important functions, failed tests or missing or incorrect documentation. Please create a separate issue for details.

There is no release date yet, but for me the main functions of the old version moin1.9 already work pretty well. We would be happy to receive further support for processing issues.

[ClaasTeichmann]

@ThomasWaldmann @UlrichB22 Thanks for your answers! I installed Moin2 in an UbuntuVM (which could be setup really easy via the "multipass" tool and the moin2 instructions) yesterday and indeed, the basics seem to work.
I will dig a bit deeper into the installation and try to configure and migrate the existing wikis (we have many) to moin2.
I will use the "readthedocs" instructions (https://moin-20.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) and let you know about any issues. I can also publish my setup once it works (ubuntu, uwsgi, nginx) if this helps.

[RogerHaase]

@ThomasWaldmann @UlrichB22 there is little left to do in the 2.0.0a1 milestone queue except for #748 and #1616. I am for pushing #748 to 2.0.0b1 and closing #1616 when we are happy with the contents.

@ThomasWaldmann do you agree and will you push to pypi?

[UlrichB22]

• I agree to shift the ldap topic, it is not clear how often it is used and the ldap3 python package has low maintenance for the last 2 years.

• Regarding the change documents, we need not refer too much to moin 1.9 as we are starting with a first moin 2.0 version. This is a separate repo. The documentation about the main differences can be found at https://moinmo.in/MoinMoin2.0 and maybe we can give a shorter overview later in the docs.

I would like to have a short checklist of tasks to be done in the release process. This would include an update of translations, I can work on translations the next days.

Thanks for all your work on a moin2 alpha release.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Yeah, ldap is not required to be in a1. Likely only some enterprise users (if any) are using that.

I didn't follow development closely, the change log should list user-visible changes.

I just opened a PR for #1571 - guess we should merge that when finished and before releasing anything on pypi, so that the new packaging gets tested.

[ReimarBauer]

LDAP may become later replaced by SAML.
This gives access to a wide range of Identity Providers e.g.
https://edugain.org/, github, orcid

BigBlueButton removed LDAP from greenlight and added OpenID or keycloak.
https://docs.bigbluebutton.org/greenlight/v3/external-authentication/

In Keycloak you can configure LDAP

Nextcloud uses SAML, config example https://codebase.helmholtz.cloud/hifis/overall/hifis-technical-documentation/-/blob/df66d54a4db62d0a83fc35728542b6fe992f7aeb/docs/cloud-services/Nubes_HZB/aai.md

In MSS we added recently SAML (GSOC project)
https://github.com/Open-MSS/MSS/blob/develop/docs/sso_via_saml_mscolab.rst

[RogerHaase]

A starting checklist for release tasks is in the docs.

https://moin-20.readthedocs.io/en/latest/devel/development.html#package-release-on-test-pypi-org

[ThomasWaldmann]

Hmm, there is also a "moin-*-py3-none-any.whl" built in dist. Not very familiar with non-binary wheels, what is the point compared to the .tgz?

[RogerHaase]

Helpful tutorial on wheels: https://realpython.com/python-wheels/