Proposal: Joint frontend effort to make significant progress on a larger topic

Problem

There's been a discussion in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/341883 to prolong the allocations for backend engineering. The proposal will also have an impact on frontend as several teams might not have backend support for or an indefinite period of time. While some teams still have feature work and tech debt issues that can be worked on without backend, other teams might find themselves in the situation of looking out for meaningful areas to contribute to. Why not combine forces and consider a joint effort to make progress on some of our larger frontend topics? Product also raised an issue to accomplish a BHAG in gitlab-com/Product#3037 (closed)

This issues serves as an overview of some meaningful larger frontend topics that would require broader collaboration.

Proposal

The list below gives a brief overview of larger frontend topics that would require broader collaboration. Note, the list is neither complete nor in order of priority. Please feel free to add more topics

• Migrate HAML components to Pajamas
• Remove jQuery from GitLabs Frontend code
  • Remove/replace dependencies utilizing jQuery
  • Replace jQuery Ajax calls with axios
• Extract Page Specific CSS Files
• Integrate filtered-search component from gitlab-ui
• GraphQL observability
• Apollo Client 2.6 -> 3.0 migration
• Improve UX on mobile devices
• Frontend Observability working group items
• Migration from Vue 2 to Vue 3
• Use CSS variables for controlling colors
• Improve quality of Vue-related frontend testing suite
• ...

Let's first agree on a top priority and then propose a path forward on how we can split up the work.

/cc @m_gill @dsatcher @oregand

Update 2021-10-21

EMs have voted, here are our top priorities:

1. Migrate components to Pajamas: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/ecosystem-stage/team-tasks/-/issues/95
2. Migration from Vue 2 to Vue 3
3. Apollo Client 2.6 -> 3.0 migration

Next steps

We should have epics for all topics already. While some epics might not be up-to-date anymore, they should at least give a good overview of the work that needs to be done and will serve as a good starting point to kick things off and organize work.

Call for action

EMs - Is there a member on your team who would be interested in becoming the DRI for one of these topics or would you be interested yourself in driving one of these efforts?

Please update the table and add:

• 🏎 - in the column along with the team member's name who wants to be the DRI for this topic
• 🤝 - in the column along with the team member's name who wants to participate in this effort
• ❌ - in the column if you are supportive but don't have the capacity to collaborate at the moment

Engineering Manager	Pajamas migration	Vue 3 migration	Apollo Client 3.0 migration
@andr3
@arturoherrero	❌	❌	❌
@dennis
@donaldcook		🏎 @ntepluhina	🏎 @ntepluhina
@leipert	🏎 @markrian / @ohoral / @mikegreiling
@michelletorres	❌	🤝 @nmezzopera	❌
@nicholasklick
@nicolewilliams	❌	❌	❌
@nmccorrison	🤝 @jannik_lehmann @aturinske @dftian	🤝 @svedova @pgascouvaillancourt @farias-gl @sming-gitlab @dpisek	🤝 @farias-gl @sming-gitlab @dpisek
@oregand
@rhardarson	❌	❌	❌
@samdbeckham	❌	🤝 @pburdette, 🤝 @jivanvl	❌
@shampton
@wortschi	🤝 @ekigbo, @blabuschagne	🏎 @xanf