[haiku-development] Re: Haiku R1A4 Postmortem
- From: luroh <lurohh@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2012 20:53:19 +0100
Alexander von Gluck IV wrote:
> I've been working on the mentioned PDF.. here is the first draft:
> http://goo.gl/Vg7zv
>
> Thoughts?
Well. Firstly, well done on the release(s). You stepped up and picked
up the slack and we're all very much grateful for it.
As a mostly innocent bystander observing our release methodology over
the years, I have condensed a list of notes that I have kept around
into three main suggestions for lessening the load on the RM and to
improve testing. In order of importance:
1) Stop merging to branch. Fixes for the branch, along with any
features approved by the RM, should be committed to the branch by the
individual developers during feature freeze, not by the RM. If the
fixes are suitable for trunk as well, fine, the developers can go
ahead and merge them to trunk, but the health of the trunk is not the
responsibility of the RM. As a side benefit, this frees up trunk for
non-release related development, instead of keeping it in a painful
indefinite semi-freeze. This all would lead to...
...better testing. Currently, a user reporting a problem in the branch
will get a fix committed to trunk(!), which can lead to catch 22
situations; the fix won't get merged to branch unless verified OK,
which the user can't do, since he's only fed nightly branch builds.
There are several examples in Trac of this happening, causing
unnecessary delays. Additionally benefiting the release, more people
would be drawn into branch testing, as there would be a reduced need
for staying on trunk for the "latest and greatest".
Once code freeze happens, only fixes approved by the RM get committed,
still by the respective developers.
2) Branch buildtools too. This has the benefit of not blocking Haiku
trunk development while keeping the release branch protected from any
potentially invasive changes.
3) Keep the ISO and Anyboot images < 700 MB from day one to let the
testers burn them to CDs.
- luroh
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