[REPORT] HBase Quarterly report Apr-Jun 2019

[Misty Linville <mi...@apache.org>]

All,

HBase submits a report to the ASF board once a quarter, to inform the board
about project health. I'm sending the report to the user@ and dev@ mailing
lists because you are the project, and for transparency. If you have any
questions about the report or the running of the project, you can pose them
to any PMC member or committer, or send an email to private@hbase.apache.org,
which every PMC member subscribes to.

Thanks,
Misty
--
## Description:

Apache HBase is an open-source, distributed, versioned, non-relational
database. Apache HBase gives you low latency random access to billions of
rows with millions of columns atop non-specialized hardware.

hbase-connectors is a collection of integration points with other projects.
The initial release includes artifacts for use with Apache Kafka and Apache
Spark.

hbase-filesystem contains HBase project-specific implementations of the
Apache Hadoop FileSystem API. It is currently experimental and internal to
the project.

## Issues:

<private>
The HBase PMC previously requested mediation from the ASF membership on an
internal PMC matter, and are withdrawing the request. The individual is not
currently active in the HBase project. This item will be omitted from
future reports, unless new issues arise. See
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/e5b2d756033821e4c7162647259a673c91fcd581b00ca16e8280c13a@%3Cboard.apache.org%3E
.
</private>
Board-only information removed from public report.

## Activity:

There have been lots of interesting discussions on the dev@ mailing list.
Highlights:
- HBase 1.2.x is at the end of maintenance (EOM). 1.2.x users are
encouraged to upgrade to the current stable line (1.4.9) or even newer if
they are able.
- We had more discussions of EOLing the 2.0.x line, and decided to release
a 2.0.6 release first. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/804ee14d830ab41bdf5846f6f86d3db7f1af36f6304d82ef89d67f44@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
We started talking about HBase 3 and we'd like to hear your thoughts. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/e12dd0805d2dc99ddb713f72e8978977e406681716059944a141fca9@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
- We're looking for users who are using "Preemptive Fast Fail." If that's
you, please weigh in. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/e234283ff115bd74d018178052886ad5494932b8070317d7b9268d86@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
- We mostly wrapped up the 6+ month move to git-box. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/3496568d6cc002f74f5c3bcce46ed44b7ee9e90d7d53af2c65b6f785@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/d05defa96237dca49783c1b615964b6b09ff90482c4873b390141488@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E)
and improved the documentation for reviewers and committers (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/11ade0cc981913997d719c7138bbb930bf528c2d2f5c048b7d4cd4f3@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
).
- Toward modularizing HBase code for ease of maintenance and releases, we
created new repositories for hbase-connectors, hbase-native-client,
hbase-filesystem. (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-20934,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/c6d4717d5569de7cf89125b253b2126d9ec87ed8a895d7cf3c46dff2@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E,
https://github.com/apache/hbase-native-client,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a6403bc04be7bf04ba90196b44f1a4cdc0364cd2e7ca1927250a8f1b@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/93fd0bd79cb54bc14015fa7e17ddb11e02a4b44ecaf75f916f232833@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
- We improved the Downloads page by removing all references to
dist.apache.org from it. (https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HBASE-22206)
- We had several heart-felt discussions, on dev@ and private@, about the
responsibility of the PMC in voting for release candidates, Release Manager
burn-out, the meaning of +0 votes, whether to continue testing a RC after
it is sunk, and other related topics. Some of those discussions are
available to the public. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a4f8e44bef8ceac7faf7759c3c8e66d495ce484216978f71548b4e31@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/9de91f65ecd4290bf82c52393078ac15a8933adb67bb22719ca6744b@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E,
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/8cf2f7d8651f0975d413355641ea8ca4e6ac1204b5c4532c027f5208@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E).
See the items below about voting.
- Anoop started a Google Group for people interested in hosting or
attending HBase meet-ups in India (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/cfca58e62ceb2120808dbe62c9860bf9bdb7e3a023edfeffdcef83ed@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
- Josh Elser organized and attended the first NoSQL Day on May 21 in
Washington, DC, and wrote up a report. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/a30a42f34cc6581aca68944551604b18b90fab5147ff69705e543081@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)
- A team of developers expressed interest in getting HBase running on ARM,
and offered to help manage some testing infrastructure. (
https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/e2c1a628491d6d659ee9ef948d3e9d760a781c2ce2d657cda1d9ab14@%3Cdev.hbase.apache.org%3E
)

HBaseCon Asia takes place July 20, 2019, in Beijing. The Call For Papers
(CFP) closed on June 17. (https://hbase.apache.org/hbaseconasia-2019/,
https://easychair.org/cfp/hbaseconasia-2019)

Another goal, spanning several quarters, is to solicit more non-binding
votes on release candidates, as non-binding votes are one signal of broader
community engagement. Based on several discussions, we surfaced the
following further expectations:
- Voting on release candidates is largely about well-formedness of the
artifacts. A script exists to help determine well-formedness.
- A candidate that gets few votes can be discouraging to the release
manager (RM).
- A +0 vote is a powerful signal to the RM that you care about a candidate
but don't have enough information to vote decisively.
- Don't assume a single -1 means a candidate is sunk, even if it looks
serious.
- If you find a problem, file a JIRA and try to help find root cause. Don't
rely on the RM to own every problem.
- PMC members are expected to vote on as many release candidates as
possible, and 1.x releases need more consistent voters.
As a reminder, anyone on the dev@ list can test and provide feedback on a
release candidate, and cast a non-binding vote.

Three new committers were added this quarter, and one committer joined the
PMC. More details below. Thanks to the new committers and PMC members for
agreeing to take on more responsibilities in the project.

## Health report:

We're in the middle of the summer in the northern hemisphere, but it hasn't
slowed down the conversation. Subscribers to dev@ are down a bit (-41), but
discussions are still vigorous, with 1524 emails (1064 last quarter).

The same pattern holds for users@, with 61 fewer subscribers than last
quarter, but 184 emails (115 last quarter).

We're still fixing a lot of JIRAs, and this quarter we fixed ever so
slightly more than we created! Numbers below.


## PMC changes:

- Currently 46 PMC members.
- Jan Hentschel was added to the PMC on Tue May 07 2019

## Committer base changes:

- Currently 82 committers.
- New commmitters:
   - Yi Mei was added as a committer on Wed May 22 2019
   - Wellington Chevreuil was added as a committer on Thu Jun 06 2019
   - Xiang Li was added as a committer on Mon May 13 2019

## Releases:

- 1.2.12 was released on Tue Apr 16 2019
- 1.3.4 was released on Sat May 4, 2019
- 2.1.5 was released on Wed Jun 5, 2019
- 1.3.5 was released on Sun Jun 09 2019
- 1.4.10 was released on Sun Jun 09 2019
- 2.2.0 was released on Mon Jun 10 2019
- hbase-connectors-1.0.0 was released on Thu May 02 2019
- hbase-filesystem-1.0.0-alpha1 was released on Mon Jun 10 2019

## Mailing list activity:

 - dev@hbase.apache.org:
    - 1007 subscribers (down -41 in the last 3 months):
    - 1524 emails sent to list (1064 in previous quarter)

 - user@hbase.apache.org:
    - 2171 subscribers (down -61 in the last 3 months):
    - 184 emails sent to list (117 in previous quarter)

## JIRA activity:

 - 484 JIRA tickets created in the last 3 months  (down from 494 last
quarter)
 - 489 JIRA tickets closed/resolved in the last 3 months  (up from 436 last
quarter)