Kepler approaches.
I'm starting to get IP Log review requests for the upcoming release.
In at least two cases, I'm pretty sure that the submitter thought
that the release date was in May. To be clear, here are the dates:
May 24/2013 - Deadline to submit IP Logs for Kepler releases
June 5/2013 - PMC-approved Review materials submitted to EMO
June 12/2013 - Kepler Uber Release review
June 26/2013 - Kepler release
The IP Logs are not due for another month. It's still a little
early, but it's perfectly acceptable to submit your IP log for
review in advance of the actual required-by date. Just keep in mind
that the log needs to accurately reflect the content that you're
releasing; if you anticipate receiving any contributions from folks
who are not committers, it might be a good idea to hold off for a
while.
While I'm at it, I'd like to make a plea to everybody to
please
try and honour the dates specified. There are a few projects
that make a habit of submitting the required materials late; this
causes a lot of stress for everybody involved. If you haven't
started thinking about your IP Log and review documentation, now
might be a good time to do so.
I need to have you PMC-approved review documentation before EOB
on June 5/2013. You can either do what we've been doing for
years and submit this information as a presentation, document, PDF,
or whatever. Or you can just enter review information directly in
the release record in the Project Management Infrastructure. A few
of you have already started doing the latter; my sense is that it is
an easy way to assemble and provide this information. Please let me
know if you think otherwise, or if there is anything that we can do
to improve it.
The PMC approval part is important. Get it approved. This may
take some time. Plan to engage your PMC at least a full week in
advance of the June 5 deadline. PMC members, please make sure that
the document is complete and that you are satisfied with its content
before providing your approval. When I look at the extremely short
(or non-existent) "outside contributions" sections on some IP logs,
I grow concerned that some projects aren't doing enough to court the
community and grow diversity.
Please use the Release Review checklist to make sure that you've
done all the necessary bits:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Development_Resources/HOWTO/Release_Reviews#Checklist
Note that this checklist has been around for a long time. There
should be nothing new or surprising here.
I've noticed that a lot of projects do not have plans posted.
This is an important and necessary part of the development process.
Plan information can be entered directly in the release record in
the Project Management Infrastructure. Providing a project plan in a
standard format is required. Wrestling with XML is no longer
required. It's easy. Please make this happen.
Note that planning should happen at the beginning of a release
cycle. PMC's, please impress the importance of this on your
projects.
Thanks,
Wayne