Impact Framework Project Updates 2024-06-20

[jmcook1186]

Who

Sponsor: @jawache (GSF)
Product owner: @jmcook1186 (GSF)
Leads: @navveenb (Accenture), @srini1978 (Microsoft)

Overview

Over the past two weeks we have been focusing on three things:

• shipping the new if-env command line tool
• overhauling our error handling protocol
• added tutorials on creating pipelines for common patterns to our if-docs
• preparing the next epic

We released IF v0.4.0 which includes our if-diff tool and the new --debug flag as well as upgraded logging functionality.

We also deployed our new Explorer website where anyone can share or search for plugins!

Don't forget you can still participate in the discussions around our next epic here:

• Exhaust Scripts: New Epic: Exhaust scripts #766
• Simplify Config: New Epic: Simplify config #767
• Idempotence : New Epic: Idempotence #768
• Global Time-sync: New epic: Global Time-sync #771
• Parameter Metadata: New Epic: Parameter metadata #772

Updates

Here's the details for our most significant updates this fortnight:

• if-env: This CLI tool allows you to easily create execution environments for IF manifests

• Error handling protocols

• Pipeline documentation

We also deprecated our if-plugins and if-unofficial-plugins repositories. We won't remove anything for now to make sure we don't break anyone's pipeliens, but we will not be actively maintaining these repositories from now on - all development on if-plugins is happening in builtins which come bundled in IF.

Issues

We realized that our plan to implement phased execution, where time-sync is always executed between regroup and compute will be dificult unless we update our builtins to handle zero values more gracefully. This is because time-sync can in-fill missing values with zeroes in some cases, which will break the compute phase of the execution. Therefore, we've added an issue to handle zeroes more gracefully.
#850

Outlook

• Finalise the error logging and automated testing to ensure a smooth release.
  • Build if-check #638
  • 👍🏼 Set up CI/CD to trigger automated tests for PRs #621
  • Improve error messages emitted from IF and plugins #593
• Document latest changes and update support materials
  • Add documentation for error handling best practices #602
  • Update docs to explain IF repositories #839
  • Update FAQs on if-docs website #829
  • Add a simple js-only plugin template #603
• Start developing the phased execution and simplified configuration features.
  • Ensure builtins do not panic when they see zeros #850
  • MockObservations adds its mock data to outputs instead of inputs #846
  • Epic - Idempotent Manifests #762
  • Epic - Simplified Configuration #765