F9 Feature Process

[John Poelstra]

After FESCo discusses and votes on the new development process proposed by Jesse Keating at http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/DevelopmentChangesProposal tomorrow I would start a new discussion culminating in a vote by FESCo one week from now (November 8) as to how we want the Feature process to work for Fedora 9.

I gave some initial thoughts are here: http://poelcat.wordpress.com/2007/10/16/fedora-8-feature-retrospective/

Overall I believe we can roll most of the process forward for F9, however a few tweaks and clarifications to the process will help things run smoother and make my job easier because then I can help guide the process in a way that is consistent with what everyone wants and agrees to.

The current policy is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy

To start the discussion, I have listed the specific issues I think need to be addressed.  Other input and opinions are welcome too!  I think this threads the conversation better and keeps all the information in one place.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F9PolicyReview.

Thanks,
John


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Quick Overview if you don't want to visit the wiki ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here are some of the big issues from my perspectiveones:

1) What is a FEATURE and how should the policy be clarified http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy#definition
  -considering that anyone can commit new code and packages to Fedora what is unique about a feature?
  -it is waste of everyone's time to have someone create a feature page and then for FESCo to say "denied--that isn't a feature"

2) Do we have common agreement on the purpose of creating a feature page?
  -marketing?
  -testing?
  -release notes?
  -other?
  -all of the above?

3) What if someone creates a nice enhancement to Fedora that is new in the upcoming release but no feature page is created for it?  For example, system-config-firewall in F8.

To someone not familiar with Fedora wouldn't they expect http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/FeatureList and http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/8/ReleaseSummary to contain the same information or for there to only be one page? The ReleaseSummary page is really good by the way!

4) How do we (realistically) encourage people to keep their feature pages up to date?  It was a pain to keep hounding people to keep the status of their pages up to date--very few people kept them updated every 2 weeks.  Considering how short our release cycle is I don't think we can go much longer than that.

5) What does "Feature Freeze" really mean? 
  --Do we want to be more disciplined? If we aren't feature frozen are we willing to move the end of the schedule to allow adequate testing time?
  --What is the point of having a milestone that we don't really follow?

6) What if a feature is not ''complete'' at Feature Freeze?  
  -How do we decide to drop it versus give it more time?

7) How do we define a feature as ''complete''?