Fedora scheduling made easy

John Poelstra poelstra at redhat.com
Wed Mar 14 05:24:37 UTC 2007


Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> John Poelstra wrote:
>>
>> In this post 
>> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2007-March/msg00341.html 
>>
>> Jeremy makes a good point about being able to scale and holding to our 
>> schedules.  I believe the Fedora project can scale successfully with 
>> detailed schedules and more information about what happens in each 
>> step.  I've created a new framework (contrasted with the existing 
>> schedule) and taken a few liberties at guessing at a few additional 
>> milestones that might be useful: 
>> https://poelcat.108.redhat.com/nonav/fedora/schedules/fc7/fc7-sched.png.  
>> Additional steps can easily be added.
>>
>> As I went through the Fedora schedule here: 
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/7 I found a general outline of 
>> what is supposed to happen, but not a lot of explanation about what 
>> each step means or what is required for a particular milestone to be 
>> considered finished... in other words, "what exactly does String 
>> Freeze mean?"
> 
> This shouldnt be part of a schedule. The schedule assumes that everyone 
> involved knows what a string freeze means. If that requires explanation 
> the schedule can link to the developers guide.

This is where we fall short if we hope to scale and bring new people in. 
  We have to focus on making it easier for those that do not include 
"everyone involved" to learn so they can be more involved.

The schedule should "assume" nothing.  If we use a term we should 
provide a direct reference to what it means.  In the previous thread on 
what must happen at string freeze "everyone involved" was not in agreement.

Part of having a more detailed schedule helps not "everyone involved" to 
have a better idea of what steps go into getting a distribution ready 
for release and how much work it is.  I'm curious myself... reading the 
current schedule:
1) what happens between 3-may-07 and 24-may-07 and why do we have to 
wait so long ;-)?
2) if certain things take a fixed amount of time (e.g. syncing the 
mirrors, composing the ISOs, etc.) what is the impact if they are 
delayed by a preceding step?  Maybe that motivates me to start testing 
earlier or helps me to understand when the release overall is delayed.

John




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