Re: Release process (was Re: Move to a cadence release model?)

[Stephen Leake]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Stephen Leake <address@hidden>

>> Which is precisely why we have a feature freeze phase; it enforces this
>> desire.
>
> We cannot enforce it.

Well, the feature freeze encourages developers to work on the release
more than a non-feature freeze model does. At least, it works that way
for me.

>> I know I would be _very_ tempted to ignore the release branch, to keep
>> working on my latest Cool Feature instead.
>> 
>> If I know I have to wait for a release before I can merge to master
>> again, I'll work on the release as much as I can.
>
> These considerations will become valid only when we have enough
> developers paying attention to bugs that are reported.  (That includes
> you, Stephen, btw.)  

Yes. I don't scan the bug tool for bugs that I might be able to work on;
sometimes it seems I should. For now, I rely on someone interested in
the bug emailing me if they think I could help.

Is there a way to get an email for every new bug? I don't see anything
on the debbugs pages, but I didn't look very hard. I'm curious how much
traffic that would be.

During the last feature freeze, there were reminders on this list of the
bugs that were deemed release-critical. I looked at all of those bugs,
and decided I could not usefully contribute to fixing them.

This time around, I would argue that "fix the byte-compiler errors in
cedet/*" is a release-critical bug, and I will work on that. I have
already offered to, but I'm waiting for Eric to organize the effort. It
needs to wait until he finishes his final merge to master.

There may be other release-critical bugs that I can usefully work on.

I don't have statistics on how well the feature-freeze model works in
getting release-critical bugs fixed. Have we had other release models in
the past? did they work any better?

I do know that these same discussions were had at the start of the last
feature-freeze. So a document that records the rationale for the release
process would be useful.

-- 
-- Stephe