ReleaseEngineering/Meetings/2008-dec-01

Fedora Release Engineering Meeting :: Monday 2008-12-01

Fedora 11 Schedule

• Draft schedule agreed to by release engineering
  • sending to FESCo for final approval at next meeting
  • https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/11/Schedule
• desire to be stricter around freezes and tracking feature status

Other Plans for Fedora 11

• build out documentation so we can grow Release Engineering beyond current members
• signing server
• more automation around check-ins and builds

Fedora 11 Naming

• f13 to check with Josh Boyer (jwb) on running the process

IRC Transcript

f13	ping: notting jeremy rdieter_away spot lmacken poelcat wwoods warren	10:00
* notting is here		10:00
* lmacken		10:00
* warren here		10:00
jeremy	hi	10:00
* poelcat here		10:03
f13	oh sorry	10:06
f13	got distracted	10:06
-!- f13 changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora releng - F11 Schedule		10:06
f13	.rel 843	10:06
zodbot	f13: #843 (Draft Fedora 11 Schedule) - Fedora Release Engineering - Trac - https://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng/ticket/843	10:06
* f13 wishes wwoods was here		10:06
notting	as i said in e-mail to poelcat, the latest proposal (http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/schedules/f-11/f-11-draft.html) seems reasonable	10:08
poelcat	f13: i'll make other wording changes you suggested in ticket	10:09
f13	I added a comment in the ticket about the tail end of the schedule	10:09
* poelcat votes for "send it to FESCo!"		10:09
wwoods	PATCHOW	10:09
f13	wwoods had been talking about radical changes he'd like to see at the tail end too, but unfortunately he's not here	10:09
* wwoods here now		10:09
f13	OR IS HE!?!	10:09
* wwoods appears in a poofy cloud of flour		10:09
f13	‽	10:10
wwoods	smokebombs smell funny. anyway: scheduling magic	10:10
wwoods	There aren't any radical changes to the schedule per se - at least not against the version I'm looking at	10:11
f13	wwoods: I thought you were talking about doing away with Preview?	10:12
wwoods	The only real change was to make the final freeze more final (and more frozen) by demanding final builds *before* then	10:12
wwoods	emphasizing that by calling Preview "RC1"	10:13
wwoods	and rejecting any features that wouldn't be fully complete by then	10:13
wwoods	I don't think that's a *radical* change though	10:14
f13	so I'm with you on making the final freeze more strict	10:14
f13	and I think one way to do that is part of my suggestion, moving the RC compose date up to the 5th rather than the 12th	10:15
wwoods	I'm undecided on renaming (since I doubt that Preview will actually be a viable RC)	10:15
f13	I'm not comfortable calling Preview an "RC" though	10:15
wwoods	yeah	10:15
warren	Perhaps we should create a RHEL-like exceptions process, and make Beta the point where we get more strict?	10:15
f13	unless we actually made it an RC	10:15
f13	beta is really really early to get like that	10:15
warren	That might beat people to get stuff done long before the hard deadline of RC.	10:15
f13	and there is no way I'm going to support ack-flags and cvs blockage for Fedora	10:16
wwoods	yeah we're not doing that.	10:16
f13	warren: currently we state that your features have to be /testable/ by Beta, not perfect	10:16
warren	I wouldn't ever suggest cvs blockage	10:16
f13	we give you from beta to final freeze to fix your bugs found in testing	10:16
notting	f13: the 5th? that's not in the trac ticket	10:17
f13	oops	10:17
f13	sorry, the 12th	10:17
wwoods	we need a spec by Alpha and something that (mostly) meets spec by Beta. If it doesn't fully meet spec at the *freeze* for PR, it gets booted	10:17
f13	wwoods: I'd rather have the 'boot' date a week prior to final freeze	10:18
wwoods	right - the FESCo meeting before each freeze decides what will actually make it into the release	10:18
f13	wwoods: that gives us a week to enact the contengency plan without having to do a bunch of tag requests	10:18
wwoods	if something gets booted, it gets booted before we freeze, and then we freeze without it	10:18
f13	what days are fesco meetings?	10:18
poelcat	f13: wed	10:19
notting	wednesdays, ATM	10:19
wwoods	and since freezes are on tuesdays, that means it's a week	10:19
f13	ok, so that's one day less than a week, but I can live with that	10:19
wwoods	but yeah, just in case the meetings move or whatever, let's be clear - the fesco meeting the week *before* the freeze is the deadline	10:20
wwoods	anything that's not meeting the requirements at that moment *will* be dropped	10:21
f13	s/dropped/will have the contengency plan enacted/	10:22
wwoods	(unless it's definitely 100% sure going to be ready before the freeze)	10:22
f13	of course this means we need to have valid contengency plans	10:22
wwoods	yes - assume that "dropping" a feature means that we follow the contingency plan	10:22
f13	other than "wait longer"	10:22
wwoods	sometimes the contingency plan is just "don't tag these packages" or "don't add to comps" or whatever	10:23
warren	or "do nothing, just don't advertise it on the feature list"	10:23
wwoods	right	10:23
wwoods	"dropped" sounds a lot more harsh, I should try to avoid it	10:23
wwoods	"deferred" might be a better choice	10:24
f13	wwoods: just to recap, there are no date changes you'd recommend for the schedule?	10:26
wwoods	no, I think being stricter about what changes we allow is sufficient	10:26
wwoods	a month in Final Freeze should be plenty, so long as we stick to the Final Freeziness of it	10:27
f13	sadly it's going to result in another 300+ 0-day update set	10:28
f13	ok, is there any other input on the schedule?	10:29
wwoods	it would be nice if we had some subset of the distribution - some Core part of Fedora - that was subject to the stricter freeze requirements	10:29
f13	Proposal: accept poelcat's draft and push to FESCo for approval	10:29
poelcat	+1	10:30
f13	wwoods: I've seen that asked before, but where would you draw the line, how would you enforce it, and why couldn't we just do that anyway with what we accept/reject?	10:30
notting	+1	10:30
spot	+1	10:30
f13	(+1 to the proposal btw)	10:30
f13	warren: wwoods: jeremy: lmacken: rdieter_away: votes?	10:32
lmacken	+1	10:32
wwoods	+1	10:32
f13	well, I think that's enough to pass, so poelcat consider it passed.	10:34
poelcat	f13: i'll forward to bpepple for inclusion on FESCo's agenda this wed	10:34
f13	ok.	10:36
-!- f13 changed the topic of #fedora-meeting to: Fedora Releng - F11 plans		10:36
f13	This should just be a quick braindump of what we'd like to work on for F11.	10:36
f13	I'd like to see the signing server take shap, mitr is working on that	10:36
f13	I'd like to start working on a messaging server as a communications medium for the basis of doing reactive QA testing	10:37
f13	(IE react to a cvs checkin, a package build, an update request, a rawhide push, etc...)	10:37
f13	I'd like to see an effort to gather up community ran scripts, fix them up as necessary for efficiency, conformity, and put them in the releng git, as well as setup scheduled runs of the scripts in Fedora infrastructure	10:38
notting	scripts for...?	10:38
f13	I've got some bugs to fix in pungi, as well as helping out with a re-write of the anaconda compose scripts	10:38
f13	notting: there is broken deps checking, source url checking, conflicts checking, etc...	10:39
f13	many of these can eventually be turned into reactive tests as mentioned above, but in the meantime I think it would be worth getting these ran in some "official" capacity	10:39
notting	i'd like to see more push-button release making, but i don't think i really have much time to work on it	10:40
f13	oh yeah	10:40
f13	documentation	10:40
f13	I'd like to borrow some docs writers time to help me and others beef up our documentation	10:41
f13	both from a SOP "how we do things" pov as well as a more maintainer appropriate "this is what we do and why"	10:41
f13	notting: push-button release making is going to be pretty hard	10:42
f13	but I can spend some time writing more scripts to do what I've been doing by hand	10:43
f13	it's just hard to script things across multiple systems	10:43
f13	ok, nobody else has any goals for F11?	10:49
notting	'ship it'	10:49
poelcat	f13: was there anything left over from the F10 "things to do" ticket?	10:50
f13	poelcat: pardon?	10:50
poelcat	didn't we have a ticket of F9 post mortem items for F10?	10:51
f13	yeah, they were kind of hand-wavy.	10:52
f13	I'll review the ticket and see if anything is still relevant or possible.	10:52
jeremy	f13: while not an easy goal, it'd be nice to get more "outside" participation in rel-eng	10:53
f13	jeremy: yeah, I was hoping that our drive to bring in scripts would bring on some of the authors of those scripts to the team	10:54
f13	the first question to answer though is what would we want these people doing	10:54
lfoppiano	hi	10:55
jeremy	if we got to nirvana? actual building of release trees could move between people for various stages of the release and releases instead of it always being on your plate	10:55
f13	jeremy: yeah, that would be nice. I'm just worries about the traning and such aspect leading up to that	10:57
f13	I'd like to get more people looking after overall tree health and fixing things up there	10:57
f13	as well as script writing and such	10:58
f13	that could grow into more responsibility, and in many cases can be done without handing over sysadmin-releng rights	10:58
* jeremy is unconvinced that tree health is really the "duty" of rel-eng... it ends up being done by people who happen to be in rel-eng just because we're suckers ;-)		10:59
f13	well, sure I'd love to do less work, but then the work just wouldn't get done	10:59
jeremy	but we have this very very large small-numbers (or arguably single) point of failure in terms of getting releases out, updates pushed, etc	11:00
notting	first step is the aforementioned docs	11:00
jeremy	notting: docs help. docs don't motivate people.	11:01
notting	signing server also helps	11:01
f13	yeah, I'm painfully aware of the single point of failure	11:01
notting	jeremy: it's the first step though. without docs, even motivated people are unable to help in many cases	11:01
f13	docs + people + trust = salvation	11:02
jeremy	notting: motivated people can and will muddle through without docs. it's maybe not as fast or as efficient, but it's sometimes more fun for the do-er ;-)	11:03
notting	jeremy: muddle through... to push updates?	11:03
notting	(we're drifting off-topic)	11:04
jeremy	notting: even there, yes. it starts with rough email that says this is basically what I do, you can figure it out	11:04
f13	I think each step is equally difficult	11:04
f13	starting with finding people who are A) motivated, and B) trustworthy, since right now you'd get keys to the castle	11:04
jeremy	f13: now that there's separate keys per release and updates-testing, the keys to the castle are starting to be segregated	11:05
f13	to some extent	11:05
notting	jeremy: if those you trust do something silly with the key, it's still a huge PITA	11:06
jeremy	notting: and if those with access to any of the sysadmin groups do something silly with their ssh keys, it's still a huge PITA.	11:06
* nirik would be happy to help push updates, but notes that there is a C) enough time in the day to do all the fun things out there to do. ;)		11:06
jeremy	we have got to get beyond the "oh dear god, the world could end!!!" mentality or we're always going to push people off and come up with excuses that we can't get more people really involved	11:08
jeremy	anyway, </soapbox-that's-been-bugging-me-a-little-recently-and-needed-to-get-off-my-chest>  :-)	11:08
f13	jeremy: I think it's a valid point, and something we should look at for F11	11:09
notting	jeremy: exactly, which is why we're pushing people off by ... documenting what we do so people can follow it, getting a signing server ready so we can automate more things/spread signing around, and... huh?	11:10
jeremy	notting: except that we never get the time to actually *do any of those things* because the day to day sucks up all available time	11:11
jeremy	we've been talking about working on the signing server "for the next release" for exactly how many releases now?	11:11
notting	so, you're saying 'why make plans, we'll fail to execute on them?'	11:12
notting	i really don't see what your angle is here	11:12
f13	jeremy: except this time we outsourced the signing server work to somebody who's explicitly tasked with doing it	11:12
f13	jeremy: and now we're getting results	11:12
jeremy	notting: I'm saying planning for 28 hour days doesn't do anyone any good. you have to either a) just go ahead and start getting external people involved with the day to day to help make time for the other things, even if it's not the perfect situation or b) outsourcing some of the "new" things is also valid	11:15
poelcat	how about starting with something as simple as tag requests? I see the tickets come in and would love to help from time to time	11:16
poelcat	but there are no docs or simple guidelines on what to do	11:16
jeremy	notting: my angle is that this meeting and this group is the same cabal it's always been. we've seen massive growth around people helping mmcgrath out with sysadmin-y tasks. we badly need to do the same with rel-eng if we're going to scale at all and not just burn all the candles at both ends	11:17
poelcat	granted maybe you'd argue that is why I shouldn't help because what to do should be obvious :)	11:17
jeremy	poelcat: there actually is some documentation of that one :-)	11:17
jeremy	http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/SOP/BuildRootOverrides	11:17
notting	jeremy: ... and i still state that the first step is *actually documenting what gets done*, because if someone working 28-hour days doesn't have time to do XYZ, they also don't have time to walk someone else through it when they're muddling along	11:19
f13	that's a lot of why sysadmin grew so much, they had good docs to cover what they did	11:20
jeremy	f13: the docs came as a result of trusting for the best and giving some people some responsibility	11:20
jeremy	because then there was time to write the docs	11:20
f13	ok, we're obviously going in circles here. We need both, we should shoot for both.	11:21
f13	jeremy: I'd love it if you would take up the task of trying to recruit more people in	11:21
f13	but we do have to ahve a better story for what they can do once interested.	11:21
f13	... and I think a good target for that would be shepherding scripts into the rel-eng git tree and finding a place in infrastructure to run them.	11:23
f13	and ticket triage.	11:23
f13	we're horribly over time though, is there anything else for today's meeting?	11:24
* jeremy has little to no thinking or breathing room for the next week or two. but will try to get something a little more fleshed out once he gets through this current stretch		11:24
f13	ok.	11:25
f13	thanks all!	11:25
* f13 has to jet for a bike ride before the weather sets in		11:25
notting	oh wait	11:25
f13	notting: hrm?	11:25
* notting was going to ask about f11 names		11:25
f13	oh yeah, forgot about that.	11:25
f13	that's still jwb's task, even though he's "not in releng"	11:25
f13	at least, I think he still wanted to run that	11:26
f13	I'll ping him next time I see him to get that going.	11:26

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