George Billios wrote:

Hi All,




Now its too late to change anything but I would appreciate some input
here because it's a big deal to ship with a development version of one
of the most important components.


Addressing the broader topic, it is not really a big deal to ship
"development" versions of core components (along with backported
patches). Fedora has in the past included development versions of
OpenOffice.org and even the kernel Fedora 9 will also include a "beta"
version/ development snapshot of Firefox 3 and so has other
distributions with similar release cycles .


Even enterprise releases include alpha/beta components if they are
deemed stable enough by the developers maintainers and upstream projects
themselves advice that in various occasions. Combining upstream input,
maintainer experience with the amount of feedback from users/testers
that we get from including these components early in the release cycle,
we can sufficiently gauge whether to include them in the general release
or not. What really matters is not the alpha/beta/development labels but
the actual stability of the release which can be measured by the number
of bugs reported, specific patches etc. So unless you have reported
major issues, I wouldn't worry.


Rahul

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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re:Xorg 1.5 missed the train?
From: Behdad Esfahbod <behdad@behdad.org>
To: Development discussions related to Fedora <fedora-devel-list@redhat.com>
Date: Sun 11 May 2008 10:38:39 AM EEST


On Sat, 2008-05-10 at 22:32 +0300, George Billios wrote:
What went wrong here ? Even Adam Jackson's move to become the release
manager of Xorg didn't make it possible to release 1.5 faster - and
possible "buggier"!


Release numbers are for the ignorant.


And I thought they were for a purpose. Please name the next version of
Xorg in Fedora 1.4.X.Y.Z . Besides you are not an 'ignorant', you will
always know the real version right?



Upstream maintainer and people
closely following development think of a module as a list of new
features and current bugs, shrinking and growing by time. If Adam
thinks it's fine to include a prerelease of xorg in Fedora, then, well,
it's fine.


You (and others here) miss the point, that not everybody is a developer,
not everybody monitors the bug list but almost everybody can notice the
word 'prerelease' in the F9 release notes and would like a reason why
this happened.


Take this for example:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XserverOnePointFive

It mentions that it is a prelease version but it doesn't justify why
including a prelease version is ok.





Just because we called it cairo 1.6.0 didn't make it any better than
1.5.20. In fact it was worse. We had to release 1.6.2 the day after to
fix a bad bug introduced in 1.6.0, and yes, had to release 1.6.4 on the
same day, to fix a really bad bug introduced in 1.6.2. 1.5.20 on the
other hand, was in release-candidate state for a week with no major
issues reported...



Well that is the problem of the developer not the user.


behdad



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On Sun, May 11, 2008 at 12:37 AM, George Billios <gbillios@gmail.com> wrote:
> Take this for example:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XserverOnePointFive
>
> It mentions that it is a prelease version but it doesn't justify why
> including a prelease version is ok.

Benefits are detailed on that page. Or you saying the listed details
concerning the benefits of including the pre-release of the of 1.5 are
not detailed enough for you?

And even more importantly this has gone through the Features process
and has been reviewed...by FESCO..via a transparent and open review
process that requires status updates to be performed. If there was a
significant problem with the proposed feature, there have been
multiple points in the release process where people could have raised
a red flag before the Feature Freeze deadline

For reference:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/FeatureList
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Policy
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/9/Schedule

We have an open and transparent Feature process, I see no evidence
that the process was misused for this particular feature.

The decision to change to pre-release was made in the FESCO april 10th
meeting as part of the Feature completeness agenda item. Here is the
irc log for reference:
http://bpepple.fedorapeople.org/fesco/FESCo-2008-04-10.html

In the future for Fedora 10, I hope that you will watch the FESCO
meeting agenda posts to -devel-list, and will participate in the irc
meetings when the Feature process discussion is on the agenda so that
any concerns you have can be addressed as part of the discussion.

-jef

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On Sunday 11 May 2008 04:37:30 am George Billios wrote:
> And I thought they were for a purpose. Please name the next version of
> Xorg in Fedora 1.4.X.Y.Z

Uh...

$ rpm -q xorg-x11-server-Xorg
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-29.20080415.fc9.x86_64


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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re:Xorg 1.5 missed the train?
From: Jarod Wilson <jwilson@redhat.com>
To: fedora-devel-list@redhat.com
Date: Mon 12 May 2008 07:07:25 PM EEST


On Sunday 11 May 2008 04:37:30 am George Billios wrote:

And I thought they were for a purpose. Please name the next version of
Xorg in Fedora 1.4.X.Y.Z


Uh...

$ rpm -q xorg-x11-server-Xorg
xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-29.20080415.fc9.x86_64




No you missed the irony, since 'revision numbers are for ignorants' they
should really use X Y Z !!!


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On Monday 12 May 2008 12:51:35 pm George Billios wrote:
> > On Sunday 11 May 2008 04:37:30 am George Billios wrote:
> >> And I thought they were for a purpose. Please name the next version of
> >> Xorg in Fedora 1.4.X.Y.Z
> >
> > Uh...
> >
> > $ rpm -q xorg-x11-server-Xorg
> > xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.901-29.20080415.fc9.x86_64
>
> No you missed the irony, since 'revision numbers are for ignorants' they
> should really use X Y Z !!!

Ill-conceived irony then, shouldn't have been 1.4.X.Y.Z, that still includes
numbers.

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On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 11:37 +0300, George Billios wrote:

> > Upstream maintainer and people
> > closely following development think of a module as a list of new
> > features and current bugs, shrinking and growing by time. If Adam
> > thinks it's fine to include a prerelease of xorg in Fedora, then, well,
> > it's fine.
>
> You (and others here) miss the point, that not everybody is a developer,
> not everybody monitors the bug list but almost everybody can notice the
> word 'prerelease' in the F9 release notes and would like a reason why
> this happened.
>
> Take this for example:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/XserverOnePointFive
>
> It mentions that it is a prelease version but it doesn't justify why
> including a prelease version is ok.

It's the least buggy X server branch with the features we want.

I admit, it's not a release, and that's entirely process failure on my
part. Having lots of masters to obey is not easy, and in this case my
time got chewed up by other business obligations. Thanks RHEL, you're
awesome. So the thing I chose to sacrifice was the (actually fairly
labor-intensive) process of badging the tarball as a release. It still
got bug fixes. It's ABI-stable. Leaving it in was way less disruptive
than reverting back to 1.3 would have been. It just isn't 1.5.0.

I actually went on a long rant about this at xdevconf:

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/Events/XDC2008/Notes

The essential problem is that we're a victim of our own success.
There's lots of great stuff happening in X and unfortunately the thing
to suffer there is the stabilisation effort. I do the best I can but
I'm not a superhero. Nor, really, should I have to be. And come to
that, I'm actually quite bad at the release management job. I don't
communicate effectively, I don't delegate enough, and I don't deliver on
the schedules I promise. Mea maxima freakin' culpa.

If someone else steps up to the job, huzzah. Until then we're sort of
stuck.

My question to the gallery is how do I fix this? How do _we_ fix this?
X needs more people. It's way less scary than you've been led to
believe. How do we get more people involved? How do we step up the
testing effort? How do we get to a culture of frequent releases and
incremental improvement? Without these things, release management is
going to continue to be bursts of heroic effort that almost certainly
misses deadlines, as it has been ever since Xorg 6.7.

I mean, in some sense, it's fine. It's software just like any other,
the number on the side of the box is merely a talisman, a dusting of
holy penguin pee. But the release is also the primary artifact of the
development process. Skipping that obligation is a disservice both to
ourselves and our consumers.

I hope we find an answer, but I just don't have one right now.

- ajax
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2008/5/12 Adam Jackson <ajax@redhat.com>:
>
> It's the least buggy X server branch with the features we want.
>
> I admit, it's not a release, and that's entirely process failure on my
> part. Having lots of masters to obey is not easy, and in this case my
> time got chewed up by other business obligations. Thanks RHEL, you're
> awesome. So the thing I chose to sacrifice was the (actually fairly
> labor-intensive) process of badging the tarball as a release. It still
> got bug fixes. It's ABI-stable. Leaving it in was way less disruptive
> than reverting back to 1.3 would have been. It just isn't 1.5.0.
>
> I actually went on a long rant about this at xdevconf:
>
> http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/Events/XDC2008/Notes
>
> The essential problem is that we're a victim of our own success.
> There's lots of great stuff happening in X and unfortunately the thing
> to suffer there is the stabilisation effort. I do the best I can but
> I'm not a superhero. Nor, really, should I have to be. And come to
> that, I'm actually quite bad at the release management job. I don't
> communicate effectively, I don't delegate enough, and I don't deliver on
> the schedules I promise. Mea maxima freakin' culpa.
>
> If someone else steps up to the job, huzzah. Until then we're sort of
> stuck.
>
> My question to the gallery is how do I fix this? How do _we_ fix this?
> X needs more people. It's way less scary than you've been led to
> believe. How do we get more people involved? How do we step up the
> testing effort? How do we get to a culture of frequent releases and
> incremental improvement? Without these things, release management is
> going to continue to be bursts of heroic effort that almost certainly
> misses deadlines, as it has been ever since Xorg 6.7.
>
> I mean, in some sense, it's fine. It's software just like any other,
> the number on the side of the box is merely a talisman, a dusting of
> holy penguin pee. But the release is also the primary artifact of the
> development process. Skipping that obligation is a disservice both to
> ourselves and our consumers.
>
> I hope we find an answer, but I just don't have one right now.
>
> - ajax
>

I for one think your doing a great job and will happily wait till your
ready with 1.5!

Thanks for all your hard work.

Andy

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2008/5/12 Adam Jackson <ajax@redhat.com>:
> I actually went on a long rant about this at xdevconf:
>
> http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/Events/XDC2008/Notes
>
> The essential problem is that we're a victim of our own success.
> There's lots of great stuff happening in X and unfortunately the thing
> to suffer there is the stabilisation effort. I do the best I can but
> I'm not a superhero. Nor, really, should I have to be. And come to
> that, I'm actually quite bad at the release management job. I don't
> communicate effectively, I don't delegate enough, and I don't deliver on
> the schedules I promise. Mea maxima freakin' culpa.
>
> If someone else steps up to the job, huzzah. Until then we're sort of
> stuck.
>
> My question to the gallery is how do I fix this? How do _we_ fix this?
> X needs more people. It's way less scary than you've been led to
> believe. How do we get more people involved? How do we step up the
> testing effort? How do we get to a culture of frequent releases and
> incremental improvement? Without these things, release management is
> going to continue to be bursts of heroic effort that almost certainly
> misses deadlines, as it has been ever since Xorg 6.7.

I don't know, but if Fedora is serious about being THE conduit to
connect upstream project development and downstream consumers, then
these sort of questions are exactly the sort of thing the Board should
be chewing on. Luckily enough, I've got a big mouth and I enjoy the
taste and mouth-feel of broken glass.

-jef

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On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 11:37 +0300, George Billios wrote:
> And I thought they were for a purpose. Please name the next version of
> Xorg in Fedora 1.4.X.Y.Z . Besides you are not an 'ignorant', you will
> always know the real version right?

> You (and others here) miss the point, that not everybody is a developer,
> not everybody monitors the bug list but almost everybody can notice the
> word 'prerelease' in the F9 release notes and would like a reason why
> this happened.

The bikeshed should be blue. You are an idiot if you don't like blue.

Also I demand a pony. It can live in the shed.

Why aren't you giving me my pony? You clearly don't care about the
community. I demand a 4000 page printed report detailing why you have
not given me my pony, delivered in person to my doorstep. I have a right
to know!
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