brainstorming for UDS-N - Ubuntu the Project

[Scott Kitterman]

On Sunday, October 03, 2010 11:44:54 pm Micah Gersten wrote:
>  On 10/01/2010 05:15 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> > On Friday, October 01, 2010 05:17:41 pm Bryce Harrington wrote:
> >> On Fri, Oct 01, 2010 at 07:43:39AM -0700, Rick Spencer wrote:
> >>> 1. I would like us to talk about our Freezes and how we treat them. I
> >>> think certain projects are *always* breaking freezes. I would like to
> >>> discuss if we should stop allowing this, or should we change the
> >>> process to accommodate the needs of these teams, or, perhaps all is
> >>> fine the way it is. The recent Font FFE might be an instructive case
> >>> to consider specifically, but there are probably others as well.
> >> 
> >> One thing I would suggest looking at is if the projects in question are
> >> on mis-aligned release schedules.
> >> 
> >> Fedora typically releases after Ubuntu, and seems to have a shorter
> >> freeze period than us.  Thus, projects which set their release cadence
> >> to match Fedora's more than Ubuntu's will thus release late into our
> >> freeze, leaving Ubuntu with a difficult choice of breaking freeze and
> >> risking a late addition (and the potential of Ubuntu-specific
> >> regressions we have to fight late into the release), or leaving it out
> >> and being seen by the public as "behind the curve" technically.
> >> 
> >> Add to this the pressure from our collegues and internal/external
> >> customers who are depending on functionality, hardware-enablement, or
> >> other changes which upstream has put into the new release.  This leaves
> >> us with a tough choice between breaking freeze and risking late bugs,
> >> engaging in messy and time-consuming patch backporting, or disappointing
> >> the collegue/customer.
> > 
> > Additionally, having a 5 1/2 month and 6 1/2 month release cycles will
> > complicate upstream coordination (even if it does help with internal
> > resource levelling). I'm not even going to try to explain to upstreams
> > that this is allegedly an even cadence.
> > 
> > Scott K
> 
> Could moving the release forward by one month help in this case as
> well?  We would just need to make sure the 5.5 month release was
> sufficiently after the upstream scheduled release.
> Micah

I think consistency is what would help.  Whatever cadence we pick, we should 
stick with it.  If it's the last Thursday of October and the last Thursday of 
April, let's stick with it.  Alternating short cycles and long cycles aren't 
going to provide a cadence people can align to.

Scott K