December Community Conversation

This meeting was held on Tuesday, December 9, 2025 at 11:30am ET. Monthly community meetings are convened over Zoom to discuss topics of interest. Usually there are no planned agendas and community members bring ideas and questions to share.

Meeting summary

Quick recap

The ColdFront team discussed their transition to a community-driven project and reviewed ongoing development work including governance policies, architecture updates, and plans for a 2.0 version with new app-based functionality. The team covered various technical updates including Django upgrades, code cleanup, and storage plugin development, while also discussing allocation visibility and attribute automation features. The conversation ended with discussions about Bootstrap version updates and plans for future collaboration, including conference presentations and developer-focused tutorials.

Next steps

• Sajid: Write up GitHub issue about allocation visibility for project managers who are not allocation users
• Dori: Upvote Sajid's GitHub issue about allocation visibility
• Chris Barnett: Set up another storage plugin working group meeting
• Andrew: Add Sajid to the core architecture working group Slack channel
• Sajid's student: Create pull request for Bootstrap 4 to 5 migration for next semester
• Chris Barnett: Ping Cecilia on Slack to discuss convergence between storage plugin allocation blueprint model and her allocation attributes plugin

Summary

ColdFront Community Governance Transition

The ColdFront Community Conversation discussed the repository's transition from github.com/ubccr/coldfront to github.com/coldfront, making it a fully community-driven project. Dori mentioned that the team is developing governance policies to clarify decision-making processes and appeal mechanisms, with a dedicated working group working on these details. She invited updates from the architecture working group, which has been meeting regularly to address ongoing activities.

Software 2.0 Branch Planning

The team discussed plans for a 2.0 version of their software, focusing on moving functionality from the core to a series of apps or plugins. Chris mentioned the need to wrap up open branches and push them into the current codebase for a stable release. They also considered updating the Django version before forking for the 2.0 branch. The team discussed ongoing work including Django upgrades and code cleanup in the mainline branch, with several pull requests in progress.

ColdFront Conference Updates and Planning

Dori announced that the University of Buffalo had a booth at Supercomputing with ColdFront information and stickers, and one developer gave a presentation at the Vast Storage booth. The team plans to propose a developer-focused tutorial at PEARC and will share all conference materials in the GitHub repository. Dori also invited interested participants to join the core architecture working group's private Slack channel.

Allocation Visibility and Storage Updates

The team discussed the visibility of allocations, where Dori explained that project managers cannot see allocations unless they are also added as users, though PIs are automatically added. Andrew suggested this could be addressed by creating a GitHub issue, and Sajid agreed to document this requirement. Chris Barnett provided an update on the storage plugin work, introducing the concept of storage providers and allocation attributes, which automatically set default values for new allocations based on resource types.

Django 5 and Plugin Updates

The team discussed Chris's progress on a generic storage plugin implementation, which will initially support VAST and TrueNew storage systems. Andrew shared plans for a Django 5 upgrade in the 1.X release and a potential UI refactor for ColdFront 2, including moving the navigation from top to left-side placement to better accommodate plugin additions. Sajid confirmed their system is already running Django 5.2 in production and offered to contribute to the Bootstrap 4-5 migration effort, with the working group discussions to continue in the HPC Center Management Toolset Slack channel.

Django and Bootstrap Version Updates

The team discussed upgrading Django to version 5.2 and transitioning from Bootstrap 4 to 5, with Sajid confirming they are already running Django 5 and need to update Bootstrap. Cecilia and Andrew agreed that updating Bootstrap to version 5 in the 1.X branch would be acceptable, and Sajid offered to make a pull request for this change. Dori encouraged Sajid to include his student in the project, noting the benefits of fresh perspectives in web design. Cecilia shared her work on a plugin that automates allocation attribute creation and updates, expressing interest in extending this functionality for other universities and potentially releasing it as a public plugin.

Allocation Attribute Automation Discussion

The group discussed allocation attribute automation, with Sajid explaining they added custom logic in allocation create view to automatically set attributes when allocations are created, while Cecilia described their process of manually creating projects through an external form based on project titles. Chris and Cecilia agreed to discuss converging their work on the storage plugin and allocation blueprint model, with Chris offering to share relevant repository information via Slack. The conversation ended with holiday wishes and plans to reconvene in January.