RCs for Everyone (was One (more) week slip of Fedora 11 Release)

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 15:23 -0700, John Poelstra wrote:
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Activity_Day_Fedora_Development_Cycle_2009
> won't we be another step removed from being able to use rawhide this way 
> for Fedora 12?

No, we'd essentially have two rawhides.  One that is the next release,
one that is the pending release.  Both would be composed with
installable images nightly.

> 
> If our current process isn't working to involve everyone in testing the 
> most important bits (RC), why can't we explore more ways to fix it or 
> have a FAD for it?  Ideas like:
> 1) Changing the structure of our release schedule and test releases so 
> RCs can get broad testing?
> 2) Changing the amount of last minute package changes?
> 3) Spending part of the FAD (scheduled above) for brainstorming ways to 
> explore this issue?
> 4) Not being so concerned about "holding up the developers"
>    --developers are an extremely important part of our releases because 
> without them there wouldn't be any content to release :)  No, I'm not 
> advocating doing RCs for three months (one week might be a great place 
> to start), but I think other parts of the Fedora community, including 
> our end users should be considered too.
> 5) Define "What is Fedora" and who our target audience is so we can 
> address #4 in a proper way (I realize the Board owns this and started 
> discussing it in January).  If it turns out that our releases are all 
> for developers then not holding up developers will be a key concern :)
> 
> I think it is more accurate to say that fixing the issue of making the 
> RCs available to everyone is not a priority versus saying we can't.

Sure, however you want to put it.  Right now it's not feasable to try
and get 34G worth of content into the hands of the entire world in a
reasonable enough time for that content to be of any value.  Typically
by the time we hit RC stage, we're verifying that the blocker bugs were
fixed and that the particular compose didn't break anything.  We can
typically do that within a few hours of the compose being finished, and
if it's broken, we spin a new one, in about an hour or 2.

Now, if you want to go to a mode where the last RC we compose gets
mirrored and we sit on it for a week plus, just so that the world feels
better about having participated, we can do that.  But anything found is
going to introduce at least a week slip of the schedule, in order to
fix, verify, produce an RC and let it soak for another week.  That's
just entirely too long of a wait cycle for Fedora's 6 month development
and release cycle.

You're right, it's not a high priority (at least not mine) to try and
"fix" this.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!
identi.ca: http://identi.ca/jkeating
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