[Adium-devl] Minor updates

[Colin Barrett]

On Nov 8, 2007, at 2:11 AM, Evan Schoenberg wrote:

> On Nov 7, 2007, at 8:14 PM, Chris Forsythe wrote:
>
>> We're not going to become mozilla, I keep getting the feeling you
>> want the Adium Project to become that in some fashion.
>
> Let's keep in mind that while we're not going to become Mozilla (both
> because we don't have the human resources to do so and because I don't
> believe that's what anyone involved wants  out of their efforts),
> Mozilla represents a hugely successful (by pretty much any measure you
> can pick except 'ease of new developer involvement' in my opinion -
> resulting product, user base, public appeal, financial success)
> instantiation of 'open source organization'.  There are without a
> doubt many lessons to be learned from Mozilla, and a desire not to
> become that organization shouldn't stop us from cherrypicking
> knowledge where appropriate.  Colin is in a very unique position to
> provide relevant insights from within the Mozilla machine.

Thank you, Evan, for yet again saying what I couldn't find the words  
to say.

Firstly, I'm not suggesting we set dates for our major releases (1.x),  
because we can't afford not to be quality focused there. Deadlines  
will not help anyone get things done faster because we're all doing as  
much as we can (and sometimes more than we should) to help move things  
along and get the release out the door ASAP.

However, minor releases are different story. As I mentioned earlier in  
this thread, there is much less churn and we have a good implicit  
understanding of the scope of these dot releases already. Awesome.

We already seem to be releasing roughly every month or two anyway --  
these are minor updates and often the decision to release them is  
largely arbitrary, except when we are fixing some sort of major issue  
(in which case we can rush a release out). This wouldn't be a huge  
change from how we already work, honestly.

I don't know how our release schedule fits in with localizers, we  
don't seem to do string freezes or anything that formal, but I'm  
willing to bet that giving them more notice is a good thing (maybe I  
should join the localizers list?)

Maybe people are envisioning a different future than I, so I'll try  
and describe what I see (please don't get hung up on the details here,  
it's just an example, and we can figure out how this is all going to  
work as we go, largely):

- If things are going normally and people have just been chugging away:

About N weeks after the last release someone will start a thread here  
on devl about a release. Everyone can see what's gone in to the   
release through trac and we'll figure out either there or here or both  
which tickets get punted, ideally almost everything non-critical and  
open at that time (so we can respond to issues we find in the beta,  
which is the whole point of betas). This already happens on trac  
sometimes, but not always and not everyone is always on the same page  
about things and it's kind of confusing (at least to me).

Normally that process will be quick because people are expecting it,  
and the next release has a known date so if it has to wait a couple  
weeks no big deal. Then we do the whole beta dance, get feedback, etc.  
until we get to zero tickets, hopefully like two weeks later, but  
we're at that point focused on quality, not dates. Someone then runs  
the release scripts and everything, and we've got 1.1.x.

  - If there's a critical issue:

Someone will post on devl saying they think that the next release  
should go out once issue X is fixed, ideally we'll all agree, punt as  
much stuff as we can (ideally everything) to the next release and get  
that fix out there for testing and then release ASAP.


Remember, the above is only an example of the type of work flow I'm  
envisioning. Is it a little more clear now how this is better than our  
current process? We can definitely be more explicit and regular with  
our release process (which is a Good Thing) without causing additional  
headaches.

-Colin