[Rebuild] Progress on rebuild plan

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On Wed, 21 Mar 2012 12:42:35 +0000
Tom Hughes <tom at compton.nu> wrote:
> Until this morning my understanding was that the database change was 
> going to be "online" without any significant downtime!

I still think that this is the best way forward. It would smoothly make
the required changes instead of going offline and trying to force
through an update (of which nobody knows how long it will take). 

I think we are on a good path; Matt's test-driven approach seems to be
a good way forward and after we have made a few basic API changes -
exposing the "redaction" API to authorized users - we can run the bot
without interfering with the rest of the project. 

Technically the "rebuild" of course starts when we start the bot; this
doesn't mean that there has to be downtime. The process might take a
while but not having thousands of impatient mappers (and staring eyes
of the wider public) will ensure that the change will be done with the
required diligence rather than rushing through half-baked code.

Bye
Frederik