Slow Food Digests Better - or how to maintain an ancient Python project without getting lost.

AMO - https://addons.mozilla.org/ was originally written as a PHP web application, ported to Python / Django 1.1 in 2010, more or less maintained over time and only recently got much more traction because of Firefox Quantum and Mozilla's move to WebExtensions.

The talk will show our approach to maintaining very old code, handling refactoring, adding new features as well as feature/code removal while slowly upgrading our way to a Python 3 and Django 2.0 ecosystem and why we chose that approach over a rewrite.

Transcript

1. Slow Food Digests Better Or how to maintain an ancient project without getting lost
2. addons.mozilla.org One of the oldest websites @ Mozilla
3. History Lesson
4. ~2005
9. 2013 .. 2015
10. Firefox Marketplace
12. Hard decisions Rewrite completely? Improve incrementally?
13. Balance Technical Debt vs. New Features
14. New Frontend React based Single Page App Accessing addons-server via a new API
15. Discovery Pane
16. Dec 2017!
17. Feature Flags / Switches
18. Be aware of 3rd party dependencies
19. A Quality Assurance Team safes lives
20. Implement features incrementally And simply flip the switch once ready
21. Don’t panic! You’re here for the long-run. Great food needs time, why should your software be different?
22. Thank you! github.com/EnTeQuAk twitter.com/entequak cgrebs@mozilla.com addons.mozilla.org blog.mozilla.org/addons/