plan for Dec: automation

[Graham Percival]

Ok, I'm back in civilization, I've spent the weekend doing
renovation both in terms of furniture, computer hardware, and
computer software.  Two hard drives (850 megs and 5 gigs) have
been demolished in my quest for powerful household magnets, and I
have a new mac mini with ubuntu, which puts me in the "under 30"
club (time to build the docs from scratch).  In case anybody here
is into lifehacks, I'm also trying out the "standing desk" thing,

On to important matters.  Fall 2011 has been a bit of a mess;
we've had a bad combination of absences for health, family, and
career reasons.  It isn't a problem if development slows --
there's no way of avoiding this, after all -- but it's unfortunate
when maintenance tasks slow down.  That has a ripple effect of
making everything slow down, increasing stress, etc.  It's been
something like 3 weeks since the last release candidate.

To combat this, I'm going to be working heavily on automation.
Humans should only be involved in maintenance tasks if absolutely
necessary, and even then their inolvement should be the minimum
possible.

With that in mind,
- testing+merging stable: happening every 4 hours in a cronjob.
  Regular emails to me; emails to -devel if it fails.

  Emails to -devel not implemented yet, but that's the plan.
  James: thanks for your assistance, and your services are no
  longer required.

- testing patches: partially implemented.  Will happen every 4
  hours, immediate notification upon a failing patch, otherwise it
  waits for me to look at a website and type a dozen characters.

  James: please continue doing this for the next few days.

- countdown: will be completely automated, including emails to
  devel, and emails to patch authors asking them to push.  Also
  including emails to nag patch authors once a week after push
  status is granted.

- bug squad: AFAIk you already have all the scripts you need, but
  if not, let me know and let's get something worked out.


All GOP discussions are postponed until Jan 2012.

At the moment, I doubt we'll have 2.16 before May 2012, but things
always pick up in the second half of Dec, so there's a possibility
that it'll be earlier.  Since most of the Critical issues involve
GUB, I'm not optimistic though.  I do not plan on looking at GUB
until at least February 2012 (although I'm willing to apply+test
patches to GUB).

Cheers,
- Graham