Minutes of Freetown Release Meeting, 2007-02-12

TOC and Agenda

Logistics, Participants, IRC log

• Date: Monday, 2007-02-12 21:00 GMT
• IRC Channel: #twiki_release
• Participants: KennethLavrsen (Lavr), PeterThoeny (PeterThoeny), CrawfordCurrie (CDot), ArthurClemens (ArthurClemens), SvenDowideit (SvenDowideit), MichaelDaum (MichaelDaum), SamHasler (Flenser). New: Secret bot (WikiRingBot)
• Not present but usually are: HaraldJoerg (HaraldJoerg), SteffenPoulsen (SteffenPoulsen), StephaneLenclud (Stephane Lenclud), ThomasWeigert (tweigert), KwangErnLiew (ktwilight), AndyGraybeal? (AndyGraybeal), Benjamin Jones (Dzaster), TravisBarker (TravisBarker), MartinCleaver (MartinCleaver), OliverKrueger (OliverKrueger), WillNorris (wbniv), RafaelAlvarez (Soronthar), AntonioTerceiro (terceiro), LynnwoodBrown (Lynnwood), MarkKeisler (MarkKeisler)
• Facilitated by PeterThoeny (PeterThoeny)
• Notes taken by KennethLavrsen (Lavr)
• FreetownMinutes2007x02x12.txt: Freetown Meeting Minutes 2007-02-12

1. TWiki Release 4.1.2 Coordination

• Desired outcome: Decide time frame and scope

• Walkthrough of release blockers. Highlights only
  • Item3615 lowered to normal and now waiting for feedback from reporter. Looks similar to what we saw on twiki.org when we tried speedy
  • Item3582. Conclusion was that for 4.1.2 we will try and resolve the speed issue. And if not possible remove the feature. There was a strong oppinion against the feature at the meeting.
  • Item3568. The majority favoured that TWiki should auto create the /tmp/twiki directory if it does not exist. Created manually or with configure does not work inside tmp if the system wipes /tmp after reboot. But it has to be done without doing -d always because this has a performance impact. Kenneth will attempt to react on fail and create directory.
  • Item3564. Kenneth works on this. Building a VM with RH7.3.
    • Status. Kenneth has an RH 7.3 machine running with Perl 5.6.1 and Apache 1.3. There were few code lines to change to get it to work and most were in configure in the extension installer. Unit test cases not yet updated as this is written. Kenneth continues on this. We most likely have to give up on 5.5.3 support. It is too difficult to get the environment setup. And getting the 5.6 support is still a big win and the reports we have received have been for 5.6 support. Not 5.5.
    • Quote from meeting: "Fact is we cannot test all. So we have to go for the high runners. And a test bed with Apache 1.3 and a Perl 5.6 to supplement the Apache 2/Perl 5.8 we all have may be not too bad."
  • Item2960: Not in 4.1.2 scope. Huge task.

4.1.2 release scope. Mainly to fix Perl 5.6 issue. And release when this is ready and stable.

2. TWiki 4.1 Post Mortem Discussion

• Desired outcome: Fine tune release process

• The customer advocate / 14 day rule worked well
• Need to recruit more people for the role. Maybe 3-4 people. Non-developers can be advantage.
• Need to update the TWiki app to support the process. "So we need the app to have a date flag for the 14 day rule. And we need a flag people can throw to flag "release meeting decision needed" "
• Need to make TWikiFeature04x02 more visible (done added to left bar in Codev web)

Release manager post mortem

• Beta testing was not organised well enough. Need more PR. Need to organize beta testing with non-developers. Main task for them
  • 1. Try to install it.
  • 2. Try to run a few of their own webs on it and see how things work.
  • WE developers run test cases and unit tests. That is not what beta testers should try to do. They should just try to install it and run normal topics that they use every day
  • Create a TWikiBetaTesting in Codev (Peter)
  • Make a list of the most 20 active users - not developers. Give them a chance to make a difference for the project with only a few hours of work.
• Last 1-2 weeks before release! That needs to be coordinated better so that the release manager gets a stable thing to release
  • We saw quite many bugs created the last two weeks before releasing 4.1.0 while fixing other bugs.
  • From feature freeze we need to plan at least 4 weeks of bug fixing only
  • Even if the releases are not a fixed interval we need to define criteria for T-1 week, T-4 weeks, T-8 weeks etc
• Today we create the Patch branch on the day of the release. Maybe in future we create that 2 weeks or 4 weeks before and then ONLY bug fixes are allowed. Like with patch releases today
  • PeterThoeny: well, my very personal opinion is that software can be kept very stable if every developer is manually testing every small change rigorously before checking in
• On the release day release manager would like at least one developer to be on standby that day at any time.

Action Items

• See above. Most have happened already except for the feature proposal TWiki app.

IRC Log

• FreetownMinutes2007x02x12.txt: Freetown Meeting Minutes 2007-02-12

Back to: FreetownRelease

Comments / Feedback

Hi guys, I was interested, but could not find the notes. Trust all is well. FreetownMinutes2007x02x12.txt was not found on this server.

-- KeithHelfrich - 13 Feb 2007

It took some time to post the minutes and the log...

-- PeterThoeny - 17 Feb 2007