Some Quarkiverse extensions descriptions using parent description

[xstefank]

Describe the bug
In https://quarkus.io/extensions/ any Quarkiverse extension uses the same description that is inherited from the parent:

Parent POM for Quarkiverse projects that includes the default release and artifact publishing related configuration

I'm not sure if individual extensions override this, but if they don't we should ask them to.

Which pages
https://quarkus.io/extensions/

I'm not sure where I should raise this, so point me to the correct place if this is not it, please.

[holly-cummins]

@xstefank, do you have a screenshot? It's expected that quarkiverse extensions which don't provide an extension in the pom inherit the parent description (which is annoying), but last time I checked, most extensions had unique descriptions. If you're seeing big swathes of identical descriptions, that's unexpected.

The fact that we show stupid-looking parent descriptions is a known problem (see quarkusio/quarkus#31634). We also discussed this at https://quarkusio.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/187038-dev/topic/quarkiverse.20parents/near/375241089.

Options to fix it include:

• Do nothing, continue honouring the maven model, and raise defects against individual extensions when we notice the issue. This is what we've been doing so far - see, for example, Missing description in pom quarkiverse/quarkus-jdbi#92, Add description to pom (and metadata) quarkiverse/quarkus-moneta#20, Provide description in pom.xml quarkiverse/quarkus-jnosql#88, More informative (and correct) extension description quarkiverse/quarkus-microprofile#143, Provide description in pom? quarkiverse/quarkus-config-extensions#213, and so on. It's not ideal, because as well as being pretty labour-intensive to raise all the issues and PRs, manual checks don't catch everything.
• Leaving the description blank if it is inherited from the parent, to avoid showing obviously wrong information. The problem with this is it means we're not honouring the maven model.
• Fail the publication process if a description isn't filled in. I'm reluctant to do this, since it introduces another barrier to release, and quarkiverse releases can already involve quite a few failed builds - if we do do it, we should do it in an enhanced pre-release check phase, rather than after the release PR has been merged. I've updated the epic for 'better release-time checks' to mention this need.

[xstefank]

@holly-cummins thanks for the info. If I just search for "quarkiverse" I can see this

Personally, I think we should enforce it. It's not so much work and it would look way better on the site.

[holly-cummins]

Thanks, @xstefank. I'm relieved we haven't had a huge regression :)

I'll update the issue title to reflect that.

I think enforcing it may be ok, but we need to make sure to do it early enough in the process that it doesn't contribute to what can already be a rather long "I'd like to publish," "ah, but you did something wrong!", "ok, fixed that, I'd like to publish," "ah, but you did another thing wrong!" feedback cycle. It also can't be so early in the cycle that people who've just created an extension from the template get harassed to fill in all sorts of information. In the worse case, that makes them fill in dummy data, so it doesn't help.

We should also be aware that even if we implement enforcing, there will be some extensions that have the parent description. The Jdbi extension has an unfixed issue open against it for the missing description. Some of the other extensions which are missing descriptions haven't had a release for a year or two, so blocking publication won't actually affect them.