2008.0 release -------------- Tentative schedule (dates may change): Feb. 1 Snapshot of the tree taken Feb. 25 Docs due to GDP from release coordinators Feb. 25 Snapshot frozen for beta Feb. 29 Docs finalized Mar. 3 Beta1 released Mar. 14 Final upload Mar. 17 Release To make it easier for the release engineering team to collaborate, releng lead Chris Gianelloni (wolf31o2) wants all architectures to build their releases on public developer machines. This also means that if an architecture's release coordinator can't finish the release, anyone else can pick up the work and continue. The releng team plans a few changes to profiles. Moving to multiparent profiles will significantly reduce the profiles' maintenance effort and code. It may happen for 2008.0; Chris said, "I am not sure that we'll have time to do the profile switching, but I'm going to try to come up with it. The plan will be to create 'normal' 2008.0 profiles, and I'll work on making them multi-parent." Another suggested change to profiles is the creation of an all-new multiparent subprofile, optimized for Gentoo development. The 'developer' profile would be based on the desktop profile with an additional set of FEATURES useful to developers. Chris also proposed changes to the release process, including when profiles are created for future releases. "As soon as we finish up a release," he said, "I'd like to go ahead and create the new release stuff in the repos." That includes new catalyst spec files in the releng repository, a new development profile, and possible changes to the handbook. Making this change means work can immediately start instead of waiting until the next release cycle, and it's also useful for automated builds. Public beta releases make up a major component of the new plans. Chris hopes beta releases will increase community participation as well as the quality of the final release. These feature-complete public betas will require the earlier development of release materials. To ensure sufficient time exists for testers to take advantage of the beta, a mandatory 2-week testing period will follow the beta release. A comprehensive testing checklist will be developed on the gentoo-releng mailing list, as will a list of which details of testers' machines and environments they should turn in to developers. Since in the past, testers often provided insufficient information to releng developers because their instructions weren't specific enough, a new form will include all of the required questions and details. "Sadly you almost want a beta that phones home as to what it was successfully run on," said Tom Gall (tgall). Christian Faulhammer (opfer) suggested using a hardware reporting tool such as app-admin/hwreport. Finally, Chris wants to make himself less of a single point of failure. Conversion of the releng repository to SVN and maintenance of a shared release checklist there will help, he said, so everyone can make updates as they get things done. A question about security came from Tobias Klausmann (Blackb|rd), who asked how to avoid the same problem that hit 2007.1. "Part of the problem last time was that Chris was trying to update the snapshot for *every* security bug," said x86 release coordinator Andrew Gaffney (agaffney), "instead of just the ones that affected the media." Automated builds ---------------- Branching profiles and specs for the next release early will enable the releng team to begin automated and regular internal release builds. "They'll check out the SVN for the new release and use the new dev profile," Chris said, "so we find problems and fix them year-round instead of just during the release cycle." Making these internal release builds publicly accessible can be done by individual architecture teams, but Chris said the releng team won't distribute them automatically. This could help people with architectures that require hardware support nonexistent in the last release. "My long-term goal for the automatic builds is for us to be able to use them as our initial beta," Chris said. "We pick one that's as close to release quality as possible, release it as beta, *then* start the release cycle." How do we involve the community more? ------------------------------------- Some of the most popular suggestions--addition of the public beta, letting users help with beta testing, and explicitly asking for feedback--were already proposed for other goals like improving release quality. They may also help involve the community. Another popular idea was creating a survey to ask users for the top features they want in the next release. This might happen with simple infrastructure like email or the forums, since Gentoo doesn't yet have anything better. The last idea for getting users involved is to simply do a good job of announcing the beta. Gentoo users have many places to get information (GMN, forums, website, planet, many mailing lists), so getting news about the beta to anywhere more users see it will require wide dissemination of the announcement. In addition to users, the releng team wants to get more developers involved. Donnie Berkholz (dberkholz) suggested appealing to their motivations for being a developer in the first place by doing things like testing their own packages on the LiveCD. And Chris also wants to get developers more actively involved rather than just being consumers. Other topics ------------ Using full-fledged project-management software like dotproject was proposed by developer Preston Cody (codeman). Chris said he just used a spreadsheet but wanted something more collaborative, so Preston suggested Google Docs. For now, the release checklist will live in SVN. Switching away from the Cafepress store was also brought up. Cafepress doesn't produce DVDs, but the releng team wants to encourage LiveDVD use because they have so much more content. Chris is researching some alternate stores. Regarding hardware, most architectures have working, hosted development machines. The main amd64 dev box, poseidon, could use some faster hard drives for the automated builds. Since constant security vulnerabilities forcibly canceled the 2007.1 release, improving how the releng team deals with them was a concern. The main change will be a closer collaboration between the security team and the releng team. "Releng is going to be treated just like an arch, with a security liaison and everything," Chris said, "and we'll be added to CC just like any other architecture. Before, I just found out about stuff when either someone told me or when it hit the arch aliases I was on ... neither of which was very good for planning."