Consolidating the various freezes

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On 24/09/2007, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Hi Matthew,
>
> Matthew East [2007-09-17  8:05 +0100]:
> > On 17/09/2007, Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > > I meant that I don't see the purpose of freezing the actual distro and
> > > the documentation UI/strings at the same time. After all, the purpose of
> > > the distro UI freeze is to provide a fixed target, so that the doc
> > > team can start updating/writing documentation for that release until
> > > the doc string freeze is reached (from then on, doc translators have a
> > > fixed target).
> > >
> > > I do think that the DocumentationStringFreeze should be on the
> > > ReleaseSchedule page. It hasn't been so far, because this concept
> > > hasn't been in the wiki explicitly so far.
> >
> > Well, to be precise until about two releases ago the
> > DocumentationStringFreeze was after the regular string freeze by about
> > 7 days (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BreezyReleaseSchedule). Then there was
> > a bizarre change and it became 3 weeks *before* it for Dapper and
> > Edgy. Then in Feisty the two were merged.
> >
> > You're quite right that the doc team needs a fixed target to update
> > documentation, and translators need one as well. But what we need to
> > recognise is that it's not realistic for either group to start work
> > just after string freeze (for example, 7 days to update documentation
> > would be seriously tough!). Both groups are going to be continuously
> > working throughout the release cycle, or at least a substantial
> > portion of it.
>
> I agree to your points. However, I don't see them conflicting to the
> reorganization of freezes that I proposed, it's quite orthogonal to
> that. Do you agree?

Yes, you're right. If you want we can continue the discussion separately.

As per mdz's last email in the thread, if the idea of the freezes is
to mark the period when notification becomes necessary, we should
think about having an earlier UI/string freeze so that translators and
documentors have more time to do their updating, and encourage
notification of later changes. However, the risk would then be that
the freeze would become more of a slush, I wonder if it's worth making
a distinction between soft and hard freezes for this reason.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF