Switch to monorepo - first phase

[MartijnR]

Potentially a significant amount of work

• [x] create fork : https://github.com/OpenClinica/enketo-oc
• [x] copy customized files, see current diff here: https://github.com/kobotoolbox/enketo-express/compare/master...OpenClinica:enketo-express-oc:master and create combined customizations commit
• [x] fix paths in OC theme and other theme files
• [x] check js build for enketo-webform-oc
• [x] check package.json alias solution (e.g. for xpath extensions)
• [x] fix any other build errors
• [x] get yarn workspace enketo-express test working including the specs that OC added
• [x] check CI
• [x] change info in package.json

[kkrumlian]

What are the components that would be included in this? Which components will be supported by ODK

• Create a list of components
• When the fork happens ... what will be forked ?
• Which components are not supported by ODK and only supported by us ?

Today this is what happens

• There is a master fork that ODK maintains
• Changes happen in the ODK branch of ee
• Martijn basically merges those changes into our repository
• If they fork it means that the master fork is no longer going to get any updates
• Can we still get updates from their new repos ?
• What happens when there are divergent changes and how do we manage that ?
• Guessing no one technically will be maintaining the master fork going forward.
• What is the timeline for this fork ?
• They will not contribute to the upstream community repo ?
• Monorepo & Fork timelines ...
• Who else is contributing to Martijn ...

They fork

• We will have to cherry pick changes to ensure we only get the changes that we potentially need.
• Not concerned with backward compatibility (with our forms)

Why would we want to fork ?

• We have a fork but we also have the ability of merging upstream into our fork.

[MartijnR]

The monorepo includes:

• enketo-express
• enketo-core
• enketo-transformer
• openrosa-xpath-evaluator

I believe the idea is to add more packages in the future (e.g. maybe enketo-validate).

We would create OpenClinica/enketo-oc and archive OpenClinica/enketo-express-oc.

At a high level, it's only the organization of those 4 repos that changes. After we move OpenClinica to the monorepo, the procedure for updating the OC monorepo fork with the ODK changes and updating OC's customizations should remain largely the same.

Disadvantage is that I think we'll loose our git history for the OC customizations in the new enketo-oc monorepo. I think all OC customizations so far will be combined in one big commit. Naturally we'll still be able to see the full git history in this old (archived) enketo-express-oc repo.

An advantage is that we can probably do OC customizations a bit cleaner (eventually) than we have done so far. It should also be easier for a developer to get started with working on Enketo.

More to follow (or in our next meeting perhaps?). Some of your questions are not about the monorepo change, I think, but I'll clarify.

[kkrumlian]

I think all OC customizations so far will be combined in one big commit. Is there a way to preserve the history ... Not sure how git those that ?

[kkrumlian]

When making changes for our repo ... How often would we have to make breaking changes in upstream aka enketo/enketo repo.

[kkrumlian]

How active do you think the contributions from other members will be to the upstream repo.

[MartijnR]

Is there a way to preserve the history ... Not sure how git those that ?

I think I would have to remove the enketo-express package and re-add the enketo-express-oc package. That would then no longer allow us to update it from enketo/enketo.

How often would we have to make breaking changes in upstream aka enketo/enketo repo.

I don't understand.

How active do you think the contributions from other members will be to the upstream repo.

I may not understand the question. The enketo/* repositories are just reorganized differently. That doesn't have an impact on contributions. It/they will remain under active development by ODK & co.

[kkrumlian]

Summary of conversation with Martijn

• We don't think there is a way to bring in the history from enketo-express-oc when we do the migration to mono-repo
• ODK might not be forking after all ... It was a discussion and nothing new has come out of it.
• If there are breaking changes that we would need to make at that point we can decide to fork or not.

[MartijnR]

Highlights for OC devops:

• consider using volta for node and yarn version management (However, I'm not sure if this is recommended for production environments)
• using yarn instead of npm (see yarn version requirement in readme and package.json under engines)
• modern node version! (see package.json under engines)
• move config.json of course
• use a separate build step: yarn build
• use a different start command for enketo express: yarn workspace enketo-express start