In 2020 a lot of the SUMO platform’s team work is focused on modernizing our support platform (Kitsune) and performing some foundational work that will allow us to grow and expand the platform. We have started this in H1 with the new Responsive and AAQ redesign. Last week we completed a new milestone: the Python/Django upgrade.
Why was this necessary
Support.mozilla.org was running on Python 2.7, meaning our core technology stack was running on a no longer supported version. We needed to upgrade to at least 3.7 and, at the same time, upgrade to the latest Django Long Term Support (LTS) version 2.2.
What have we focused on
During the last couple of weeks our work focused on upgrading the platform’s code-base from Python 2.7 to Python 3.8. We have also upgraded all the underlying libraries to their latest version compatible with Python 3.8 and replaced non compatible Python libraries with a compatible library with equivalent functionality. Furthermore we upgraded Django to the latest LTS version, augmented testing coverage and improved developer tooling.
What’s next
In H2 2020, we’re continuing the work on platform modernization, our next milestone being the full redesign of our search architecture (including the upgrade of the ElasticSearch service from and re implementation of the search functionality from scratch). With this we are also looking into expanding our Search UI and adding new features to offer a better internal search experience to our users.