Re: Release Notes Schedule

[John Poelstra <poelstra redhat com>]

John J. McDonough said the following on 07/28/2009 04:37 AM Pacific Time:
> Noriko
>
> Thank you so much for your careful review
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Noriko Mizumoto" <noriko redhat com>
> To: "Fedora Translation Project List" <fedora-trans-list redhat com>
> Cc: <fedora-docs-list redhat com>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 12:31 AM
> Subject: Re: Release Notes Schedule
>
> > * 4.7 Translate f-r-n for beta Sep 6 to Sep 26   21d
> > This seems not consistent with f-12-trans-tasks, which says Sep 9 to 
> > Sep 18.
>
> While I stuck with John's dates for the releases, I tried to maximize 
> the time L10N had available.  I wonder whether 9 days is sufficient.  I 
> would expect this cycle that the beta would be the bulk of the release 
> notes (although I suppose that remains to be seen).
>
> > * 4.8 Build f-r-n.rpm for beta Sep 29
> > A question, there is 2 days blank between 4.7 and 4.8. What is this for?
>
> No good reason
>
> > * 6.7 Translate f-r-n for GA Oct 20 to Oct 26  7d
> > This seems not consistent with f-12-trans-tasks, which says Oct 9 to 
> > Oct 16.
>
> The later we can do this the better.  Release notes seem to be the last 
> thing on people's radar, and we tend to discover important changes late, 
> so the later we can make the POTs the better.  Also, the original 
> schedule had some Docs tasks out of order.
>
> > * Review translation not scheduled
> > Please set up 'Review translation'.  Since we translate PO file, so it 
> > is extremely helpful if docs team can build html for review before the 
> > deadline.
>
> That is a really excellent catch.  I think we need to work on the 
> mechanics of this, but it could have  a number of advantages.
>
> > * 7.4 Translate 0-day
> > I understand that docs team has little window for Zero Day Update. But 
> > let me become devil this time as experiment. Is any chance that 
> > rel-note team can place this entry before GA Public Availability 3-Nov 
> > for inclusion? Just tiny window is fine.  I can not guarantee at all 
> > how many translators can respond.
>
> My expectation was that on release day the 0-day changes would be 
> available in English only, with an update rpm to follow the release.  
> However, we are still discussing whether it makes sense to have a single 
> rpm with six documents in 41 languages, so that may change.  It might 
> make more sense to delay the availability of the update rpm rather than 
> try to push the POT creation earlier, thus missing late breaking 
> changes.  On the other end, we are going to try to be more proactive in 
> hounding the developers for release notes input, so maybe we can reduce 
> the number of those late changes.
>
> --McD

This is a great discussion and it is really exciting to see different 
people asking the hard questions and looking for the holes that I used 
to try and do all on my own :)

Unfortunately I've found that it is extremely hard (as you may be seeing 
already) to create a really solid schedule over email, particularly when 
more than one team is involved and questions have been raised in 
response to tasks or dates someone has previously suggested.

I would like to propose that we meet on Gobby & FedoraTalk next.  So far 
I have met with: Design, Release Engineering, Quality, and Marketing to 
go over the Fedora 12 schedule this way.  I think everyone who attended 
those meetings would say they were tremendously efficient and helpful :-)

Could someone set up a meeting time and date using www.whenisgood.net? 
I promise to add my availability and create a text version of the 
existing schedule that we can then hack through and update together on 
Gobby.  It helps if I am there so I can capture the dependencies between 
the tasks and embed them in the TaskJuggler source file.

Thanks,
John