1074458 - Rename Loop to Hello in loop-client repo

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Hello (Loop) :: Client, defect)

Description

[Peter deHaan [:pdehaan]]

Currently if you create a call, the page title says "Loop" instead of "Hello":

https://call.mozilla.com/#call/bY0F1aD48wY

Currently it looks like there are ~41 instances of "Loop" in the mozilla/loop-client GitHub repo (if GitHub search can be trusted, which it cant usually): https://github.com/mozilla/loop-client/search?q=loop&type=Code&utf8=%E2%9C%93

Eventually the repo itself should probably be renamed from mozilla/loop-client to mozilla/hello-client.

Comment 1

[Adam Roach [:abr]]

I'm not sure it makes much sense to do an internal code scrub to globally replace "loop" with "hello." Retaining "loop" as the internal name while using "Hello" as the marketing name doesn't really cause any problems that I can come up with. On the other hand, a wholesale change-over of code and documentation is a lot of moderately disruptive work for questionable benefit.

Comment 2

[Peter deHaan [:pdehaan]]

Possibly.

The most obvious (and user facing) example I found so far was https://call.mozilla.com/#call/bY0F1aD48wY which has a user-facing page title of "Loop".

I've also worked on projects where we all get confused in the future because we have a bunch of references to previous code names in the code and nobody remembers what "Gumbo" was or what version it represented, not to mention the confusion of new people/contributors joining the project and having to figure out if Loop is some special thing or if it is relevant, or just some obsolete old codename.

I'd argue that it's easier to have one person do the moderately disruptive work early (now) and make everybody rebase and use the correct term going forward and then never have to think about it again. But I agree that it does have a rather limited benefit.

Comment 3

[Adam Roach [:abr]]

(In reply to Peter deHaan [:pdehaan] from comment #2)
> Possibly.
> 
> The most obvious (and user facing) example I found so far was
> https://call.mozilla.com/#call/bY0F1aD48wY which has a user-facing page
> title of "Loop".

Oh, sure; that's Bug 1070753. There are other user-facing name fixups like Bug 1013989 and Bug 1046114. If you see something that's visible to the user that isn't otherwise covered, please file a bug. But I read this (and Bug 1074462) as requests to change the internal names found in code and documentation.

> I'd argue that it's easier to have one person do the moderately disruptive
> work early (now) and make everybody rebase and use the correct term going
> forward and then never have to think about it again. But I agree that it
> does have a rather limited benefit.

I think you may underestimate how disruptive such an effort may be. This isn't just a feature; it's a relatively large service. Changes impact everything from server names, telemetry variable names, a significant number of wiki pages, a nontrivial number of prefs that would need to be *migrated* rather than simply changed, throttle-related DNS updates, fjord server provisioning and variable names... it's a long enough list that I can't keep it all in my head. The scope is well beyond one *team*, much less one person, and some changes would have to be carefully coordinated as as to prevent breaking the service.

Comment 4

[Adam Roach [:abr]]

Shell -- are you sure this is the bug you meant to block 1076709 on?

Comment 5

[:shell escalante]

i accidentally read "find all bugs around changing hello name".  unblocking that bug - and finding a place to put this one that we don't lose it.

Comment 6

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

(In reply to Adam Roach [:abr] from comment #3)
> > I'd argue that it's easier to have one person do the moderately disruptive
> > work early (now) and make everybody rebase and use the correct term going
> > forward and then never have to think about it again. But I agree that it
> > does have a rather limited benefit.
> 
> I think you may underestimate how disruptive such an effort may be. This
> isn't just a feature; it's a relatively large service. Changes impact
> everything from server names, telemetry variable names, a significant number
> of wiki pages, a nontrivial number of prefs that would need to be *migrated*
> rather than simply changed, throttle-related DNS updates, fjord server
> provisioning and variable names... it's a long enough list that I can't keep
> it all in my head. The scope is well beyond one *team*, much less one
> person, and some changes would have to be carefully coordinated as as to
> prevent breaking the service.

I agree with Adam here, we'd need to do a really big change, and it doesn't feel that this would help anything much in particular. If we stick with Loop as the codename, then I suspect we'd also be less likely to miss changes, and avoid the possibility of leaving old codenames around. Additionally, if the service name changed again in the future, then we'd have to do another round of changes etc.

The only advantage I could see is that "Loop" would be less likely to be "leaked" into press discussions about it, but unless someone asks us to, I don't think this is worth loosing the equivalent of a several days (at a guess) of developer time .

Comment 7

[Maire Reavy [:mreavy]]

We're not going to change the name in the source code. We are changing the user-visible product name to Hello in other bugs.