Canonical Public Cloud (CPC) team being more involved in release decisions on suite release day

[Phil Roche]

Hi Brian,

On Thu, 6 Apr 2023 at 20:21, Brian Murray <brian at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 23, 2023 at 02:50:55PM +0000, Phil Roche wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I work on the Canonical Public Cloud (CPC) team responsible for the build
> > and publication of all the Ubuntu cloud images
> > <http://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/> and all their supported derivatives in
> > the major public and private clouds.
> >
> > As 23.04 release day fast approaches, I would like to start a new thread
> on
> > CPC's involvement in release day decisions.
> >
> > Reflecting on the last Ubuntu 22.10 release, from a cloud image
> > perspective, it did not go very well and we were a few days behind the
> main
> > desktop/server release, finally releasing on October 22nd instead of
> > October 20th. This was due to the decision by CPC to wait for the high
> > priority CVE https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2022-2602 changes to land
> in
> > the Kinetic kernel.
>
> As I understand it the problem you'd like to address is not having the
> images (cloud, desktop, and server) released on different dates is that
> correct?
>

Exactly this yes.


> > The use cases for cloud images are not the same as for server and desktop
> > and releasing with a vulnerable kernel did not make sense even if we knew
> > an updated kernel that people could upgrade to was forthcoming.
> >
> > The current release process is centered on ISOs with cloud images being
> > downstream but I feel that given Ubuntu cloud images’ usage a situation
> > like the above with CVE-2022-2602 should have warranted a no-go decision.
>
> I believe the CPC team did make a no-go decision by opting to release
> after the rest of the images. However, what I think the CPC team really
> wants is to have any critical issue with the cloud, desktop, or server
> products which results in a no-go for that product to result in it being
> a no-go for all three of those products and likely flavors as a
> consequence. Am I understanding your intent correctly?
>

Correct


>
> For what its worth for as long as I've been involved in the release
> process, which isn't that long really, I'm not aware of a case where
> an issue with the server images ended up delaying desktop images or vice
> versa. The point being I'm not certain there is any precedent for my
> interpretation of what the CPC team is asking to have implemented.
>

Yes, for the years I have been involved, the 22.10 release was the first I
can remember where a high priority CVE landed on the same day as
release which is probably the only scenario in which CPC might be voting
for a no-go.

If the consensus is that neither server, desktop or cloud should block each
other on
release day and that there is no longer an assumption that they will
release on release
day then I am +1 but I would like us to state that clearly so we have no
confusion or
need for debate on release day.


> > What are the release teams' thoughts on CPC team being more involved in
> the
> > no/go decision process on release day? I recognise that release team
> member
> > Utkarsh Gupta is an engineer on the CPC team but his involvement in the
> > release team is not with cloud images specifically.
>
> I'd be happy to have the CPC team more involved on release day but I
> think we (or some board?) need to define a process for go / no-go
> decisions.
>

Yes, this thread was to get that conversation started.

Phil


> Cheers,
> --
> Brian Murray
>


-- 
Phil Roche
Staff Software Engineer
Canonical Public Cloud
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