String Freeze

[Richard A. Johnson]

On Thursday 26 March 2009 12:39:40 Matthew East wrote:
[...]
> Erm, no you won't - if string freeze is 1 or 2 days prior to the Beta
> Release, then you won't be able to upload the documents at that time,
> because it will be in Beta Freeze, and uploads are only permitted
> during that period if they fix a bug that is milestoned for the beta
> release. Uploads are particularly closely scrutinised in the 1-2 days
> before the Beta Release, so there is no way a regular *-docs upload
> would be permitted.

Filing an FFe for docs isn't all that difficult, as I have done it in the past 
for Kubuntu docs. Milestone all of your ubuntu-docs bugs for Beta release, so 
that covers one of the details. The other part in the exception is to 
"demonstrate strong rationale and minimal risk." That is actually the easiest 
part. Then again, it may very well be easier for Kubuntu and Xubuntu to pull 
this off than it would be for Ubuntu, but how a documentation package could 
cause a deadline to be missed is beyond me.

> I think you actually did intend your proposal to be that string freeze
> should be prior to the Beta Freeze, but I still disagree for the
> reasons set out in my previous emails.

I don't think I did, but honestly that isn't a bad idea either. One less week. 
The only reason I see that mattering is that it is tough to get people to help 
and since Dapper I have noticed that documentation work seems to always start 
around the month of the freeze. I think the one extra week argument isn't 
something to really stand on, because to me it sounds like a fix to another 
problem, which is the lack of documentation writing from the get go.

We can't use the excuse that "It is to new in the beginning to document." We 
are all pretty much documenting a Desktop Environment, and in the case of 
GNOME and Xfce, there isn't much change from release to release. Sure, you 
might not be able to document something new, like the Notify stuff (thank god 
Kubuntu skirted that one). Also, we have the User Interface Freeze weeks 
before the String Freeze. Now that I look at the Release Schedule a bit 
better, I think String Freeze would have been best for Week 19. Honestly I 
would like to see more time for translations as well. Documentation gets 
months, translations get 3 weeks. I have been looking at the documentation 
translations, and you know what, there are far fewer completions these days 
then were a couple of years back (especially in Kubuntu docs).

> The best approach is to upload a package prior to Beta Freeze and then
> after the Beta Release, to take into account any new changes
> introduced prior to the docs string freeze. This is what we have done
> for ubuntu-docs, and it has been working ok.

And I am fine with that, but this way here we don't get the amount of eyes on 
that we could get. Sure we can post blog after blog to bring the attention as 
well, but I think having it in a beta announcement is much better than the 
Planet.

-- 
 Name|  Richard JOHNSON
Title|  Developer
  WWW|  http://www.ubuntu.com
Email|  nixternal at ubuntu.com
GnuPG|  9554 2BCC 3AA2 3898 0939  56E7 3EC9 A39D 2E2C 0124

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