[ubuntu-cloud] Cloud Image UDS-R Proposal: Automatic Releases

[Nick Barcet]

Hello Ben,

As you know, I do see a lot of value in this automation.  Regarding
notification, I think we could bundle in with this change a few
modifications to the way we do them.

What I would love to see:

1/ release notes for each releases are published and kept on
cloud-images.ubuntu.com.  Maybe in /<suite>/release-notes/ with a link
from the individual /<suite>/<version>/ directory? As you remove
versions you still keep the release notes.

2/ Notification email is great, but I would rather use something that
could be linked to via rss subscription.  Maybe as simple as publishing
a status with a link to the release and notes on a dedicated twitter
account?  This would allow some further user side automation process.

3/ As Eric suggested in his reply, keep email for a bit and check again
a few month would seem reasonable to me.

Thanks for leading this.

Nick

On 10/03/2012 10:59 PM, Ben Howard wrote:
> Over this last cycle I have been putting a bit of thought into the
> Ubuntu Cloud Images build, daily promotion and release process. Of
> concern is making sure that the Ubuntu Cloud Images are of the quality
> and performance that our users both expect and demand.
> 
> At UDS [1,2] this October, I am going to propose a change in the way
> that Ubuntu Cloud Image stable releases are generated and released [3]. 
> Specifically of interest to this audience, I am going to propose that we
> move from the ad-hoc release  cadence -- where a release is need-based
> -- to an automatic release schedule based on the availability of
> security and boot critical packages that normally require a reboot upon
> updating[4].  For most stable released Ubuntu versions, a new version of
> the  cloud images would be made available every three weeks, which
> follows the release cadence of the Kernel SRU team (or ~18 releases per
> stable release per year).  The biggest motivation for  proposing this
> change is to reduce the number of updates upon boot and  to make sure
> that the stable release images are up-to-date.
> 
> One side effect to having an automatic release process is that the email
> announcements of new cloud images will need to change in both content
> and frequency. Are these emails valuable, is the content  sufficient or
> too much or if we released automatically every three  weeks, would it be
> better to discontinue the emails? Or would it be sufficient to capture
> this information on a webpage?
> 
> Before UDS, I wanted to gather feedback from our valued community; any
> feedback, concerns or questions about this proposal would be most
> appreciated. 
> 
> Thanks,
> Ben
> 
> [1] http://uds.ubuntu.com/
> [2] UDS is from 29 October to 01 November 2012
> [3] https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/servercloud-q-cloudtesting
> [4] i.e. kernel, glibc, security updates
> 
> 
> 
> 


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