Re: [gentoo-releng] 2004.2 planning

[Jeffrey Forman]

I think I am the one responding here with the least amount of
professional release engineering experience and in speaking to John and
reading over these threads some ideas came into my mind.

(1) Stick with the quarterly-release schedule until at least 2004.3 (the
last one of 2004). After that point, or a good time period before,
decide what we're going to do for >= 2005.
(2) If we stick with quarterly releases, change the viewpoint that even
releases (.0, .2) are NEW FEATURE releases. There needs to be some
compelling reason to release here. Maybe a db-backend portage (just an
idea) or some new from-the-ground-up feature. The odd (.1,.3) releases
incorporate bug fixes, typos, and other non-new-feature inclusions. In
my mind, this doesnt force devs/releng/infra to create totally new ideas
for every release. Come up with something original before the even
release, and refine it in the following odd quarter.

If we decide as 2005 nears to scrap the quarterly release system, maybe
go with tri-yearly or biannual releases. It just gives more time to the
release to come up with new ideas and new inclusions.

Ridicule, deride, praise,
-Jeff

On Wed, 2004-05-05 at 01:29, John Davis wrote:
> On Sat, 2004-05-01 at 20:14, Kurt Lieber wrote:
> > On Sat, May 01, 2004 at 11:17:24AM -0400 or thereabouts, John Davis wrote:
> > > Kurt -
> > > I've been thinking this over for quite awhile now and have vacilated
> > > between continuing quarterly releases and moving to something else.
> > > After much thought (and believe me, there has been a lot - during 2004.0
> > > I wanted nothing to do with quarterly releases), I have decided that for
> > > the immediate future, quarterly releases are the way to go for the
> > > following reasons:
> >
> > I don't agree.  We should put this on the next manager's meeting as an
> > agenda item.  As it stands, I'm not willing to support quarterly releases
> > from an infra standpoint.  If the rest of the management team decides we
> > should, then I will do my best.  As it stands, I think this is a huge waste
> > of time, resources and development effort.
> >
> > As a general rule, I think basing releases on time, rather than features,
> > is a poor way of defining release goals.  I think gathering feature
> > requests (as you have been doing so far) is a great idea.  I think we
> > should then (as a management team) decide what features need to make it
> > into the next release of Gentoo, decide how much time that will take to
> > implement and then set a target release date based on that.  We should
> > release based on features, not on time.
> >
> > --kurt
>
> Kurt -
> I respect your opinion, but I do believe that you are rushing into a
> decision that has no factual basis. Quarterly releases have not even
> been going for a year and because of this there is not substantial
> evidence against them. The fact is that quarterly releases benefit the
> user as they are kept up to date every quarter.
>
> Gentoo cannot go back to the old style (pre-2004.0) style of releases.
> The nature of our distribution does not allow us to do this. I guarantee
> you that if we do go back to the old style releases that we will be in
> the same boat as we were with 1.4 - feature creep and constantly late
> deadlines. Not only does this make Gentoo look bad as a distribution,
> but it leaves our users out in the cold as GRP, a feature that users
> very much enjoy, becomes useless due to its age.
>
> The goal of quarterly releases is *not* meeting a deadline, but rather
> providing our users with up-to-date release media for their convienence.
> I do not understand why you are rushing into your decision that
> "quarterly releases [cannot be supported] from an infra standpoint" -
> 2004.1 went great from the infra side. There were no problems, and
> 2004.2 is going to be even better now that we know exactly what to do
> with the bit flip method. Even without you there to look over things,
> the release went out without a hitch.
>
> Bring it up with the rest of the managers if you want to Kurt, but I
> assure you that it is the wrong decision to do so. Quarterly releases
> work for us devs, for the users, and for Gentoo. If you really are set
> on doing releases 1.4 style where features like GPG signing hold the
> release back forever, fine, but you are not doing what is right for our
> users.
>
> Please think about what I said earlier about the dual feature lists -
> one for releng release specific features, and one for broader gentoo
> specific features. Things like UTF8 integration and GPG signing have are
> not something that releng can directly control, therefore, the
> responsibility should not weigh on releng's shoulders to complete them,
> but rather their own respective sub-projects.
>
> Regards,
> //John
-- 


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Jeffrey Forman
Gentoo Infrastructure
Gentoo Release Engin.
jforman@g.o
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