Re-evaluating Ubuntu's Milestones

[Tim]

Hey Flavours,

  Obviously Ubuntu GNOME no longer builds ISO's however I would like to
chip in on this discussion with a few thoughts based on past experience.
Feel free to do with them what you wish, its not meant to be criticism
in any way of the current proposal, but more just something to think
about. Sorry I didnt reply earlier, just haven't had the spare time!

First my gut feeling is your going to see less community participation
because there is no tangible outcome, obviously this will vary depending
on the flavours community, some my do better, some may do worse.

From a technical perspective having the archive frozen was quite useful,
it allows you to focus on a fixed target, rather than getting distracted
by a moving target that may well introduce further bugs. LIkewise for
giving the flavour leads control over re-spins rather than depending on
daily builds. I would also agree at times, that is was somewhat
restrictive at times, but a semi-frozen archive where flavours had more
control over the flow of packages, could lessen that (auto-accept
flavour uploads perhaps, that don't overlap other flavours?). I think
traditionally there have been too many milestones in a cycle (perhaps
somewhat biased by GNOME's late release cycle), however I still think
the milestones serve an important purpose. If Ubuntu GNOME were still
spinning ISO's, I'd probably advocate for a more hybrid model, use the
more informal testing 'weeks' early in the cycle, then one beta and the
RC Milestones.

As for the automated testing, I think is important, however my
recollections of so many milestone releases dealing with somewhat corner
case installer bugs, wonder how you will get 100% test coverage. Also
for some flavours the work maintaining these test cases may end up being
as much work as co-ordinating milestone releases. I would probably
recommend getting the automated testing in place before changing things
too drastically.


Regards

   Tim





On 21/04/18 19:15, flocculant wrote:
> On 21/04/18 02:35, Simon Quigley wrote:
>> Happy Release Week!
>>
>> I do not believe there have been any -1s to this proposal from any
>> flavor, nor from the Release Team, so I think it's time to move forward
>> with it.
>>
>> In summary, what will now happen from here on out is that opt-in
>> milestones will be discontinued in favor of testing "weeks" (Tuesday
>> through Thursday). I can organize the testing weeks for the 18.10 cycle
>> (so we can get a process going), but from the 19.04 cycle and on,
>> representatives (probably Release Managers) from any active flavor can
>> (and should!) organize these testing weeks.
>>
>> Additionally, I will look into the automated testing Steve brought up
>> shortly after the 18.04 release, with the goal being to adopt that
>> sooner rather than later. I'll write a follow-up email to ubuntu-release
>> once I have something to show for that.
>>
>> Thanks everyone!
>>
>>
>>
> One quick question here - imagine that :)
>
> Given that we all (apparently) find it hard to get people testing
> during the 3 days we currently get at milestone's - why are we
> carrying on with that same tight schedule? You'll know the way this
> happens - it's the end of the testing session and suddenly someone is
> asking for help looking at their images for some reason.
>
> If we are going to just organise sections of time amongst ourselves
> during these new periods - why not do away with "weeks" and actually
> have a week - a real week. If we can't manage to organise amongst
> ourselves for longer than a couple of days then I think we should all
> pack up and do something else ;)
>
> If not, then all that's really been accomplished here is making life
> easier for Canonical (not that I disagree with us doing that I hasten
> to add), we as flavours are gaining nothing.
>
> We - as flavours - still have 3 days only to try and get people to
> find 30 minutes in their life.
>
> cheers - have good weekends
>
> Kev
>
> NB - personally I'd still prefer a system where I could stop my image
> building - and then do whatever testing I wanted to - then turn the
> build on again.
>
>
>
>

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