Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Nicholas Skaggs]

On 06/21/2012 02:46 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:25:09 AM Jono Bacon wrote:

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Scott Kitterman 

wrote:

I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its resources
on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.

I'm crystal clear that the Canonical community team's QA effort is focused
on trying to get the broader community to do QA on Canonical products.  I
think that's quite unfortunate.  Rather than just trying to get free
labor for Canonical, I would have hoped you wanted to make QA better for
the entire Ubuntu project.

This is in marked contrast to Daniel Holbach's efforts (which I've been
watching and appreciating, but not had much time to get involved with) to
bring new blood into the Ubuntu development process.  He's pursing the
kind of holistic approach I'd hope to see from your entire team.

We *are* working to "make QA better for the entire Ubuntu project",
but the point is that our focus is on *Ubuntu* and our specific
efforts don't extend to coordinating flavor testing. This doesn't mean
we are ignoring our flavors, or are not happy to offer advice or
guidance, but my team (Daniel included) is not focusing their efforts
on helping specific flavors achieve their goals.

I myself am surprised that you find this surprising: while many of our
efforts and programmes can bring value to the flavors (e.g. general
developer growth, working with upstreams, translations work etc), we
have rarely if ever assigned staff time to delivering on flavor work
items.

This is purely and simple about resourcing. Canonical is a company,
and it needs to invest its resources carefully: sure, we would love to
support all the flavors with more staff time (not just Kubuntu), but
we simply don't have the resources to do so. Importantly, though, we
are not stopping flavors from doing this work themselves...we are
still providing the infrastructure and help and guidance we can offer
in doing this work.

We're talking about two different Ubuntus.  You're talking about Ubuntu the
product defined by a set of images/metapackages/etc drawn from a subset of the
Ubuntu Linux distribution's archive.  I'm talking about Ubuntu as a project
which is bigger than either of those.

Scott K

If I may speak for myself here, my goal is to encourage ubuntu as a 
project to be a leader in open source in the realm of quality. It's what 
I care about and I hope to be a part of making happen. My work at 
Canonical aligns with that in a very harmonious way. In no way do I wish 
to close out or marginalize flavors or other QA teams -- I trust my work 
has shown this to be quite the opposite.


A brief example for illustration; in the past I have personally helped 
test some flavors images, and during the 'adopt an iso' campaign last 
cycle, while I was campaigning to help ensure a quality iso for ubuntu, 
I helped instruct people who wanted to test flavors images. This grows 
the ubuntu community as a whole and is a positive thing for the project. 
We have things in common and I encourage collaboration across flavors 
and teams (ubuntu included!).


In this example, the important distinction to make is that while I 
helped test or encouraged others to test a flavors image, I won't claim 
responsibility for assuring quality on that image or ensuring it gets 
released. That of course is up to the flavors teams, and I would not 
usurp management or responsibility away from those teams.My primary 
focus is upon ubuntu and ensuring a healthy testing community which is 
able to help assure quality for each ubuntu release. This helps everyone 
who uses ubuntu in direct and indirect ways, including flavors. A 
healthy ubuntu QA community makes for a healthier ubuntu community.


Thanks,
Nicholas

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi Stéphane

On 21/06/2012 15:45, Stéphane Graber wrote:

You'll notice that the flavours are listed separately under a flavours
heading on that page, and what's listed afterwards are proper
"derivatives" as in, out of the archive, custom spin based on Ubuntu.


It did say that flavours are derivatives, so I edited the text so that 
it makes more sense:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives?action=diff&rev2=196&rev1=195


I guess we could argue that the flavours probably shouldn't be listed on
that page at all to make it clearer.


Yep, and possibly a better explanation of the differences between 
flavours and derivatives (and make it clear that the flavours aren't 
derivatives)


> Kate also reminded me on IRC that she has an action item to at least
> remove mentions of derivatives across all the official Ubuntu websites.
> The wiki will always be trickier as people (such as that DerivativeTeam
> I never heard about) can write whatever they want...

Yep, I haven't come across it that much, but when I do I'll just update it.

-Jonathan



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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Robbie Williamson]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 06/21/2012 02:45 PM, Stéphane Graber wrote:
> Starting with just a bit of nitpicking but it's something
> we agreed at UDS that we'd try to get fixed in everyone's
> mind :) We're "flavours" not "derivatives", "flavours" are
> fully integrated in the Ubuntu project and have been
> recognized as such by the various governance boards. I
> usually consider "derivatives" as referring to our 
> downstreams like mint where they're indeed a derived
> product.
>>> Fair enough, but then this wiki page probably needs changing to
>>> reflect this: 
>>> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives
> I also thought that page was wrong initially but it's actually kind
> of right.
> 
> You'll notice that the flavours are listed separately under a
> flavours heading on that page, and what's listed afterwards are
> proper "derivatives" as in, out of the archive, custom spin based
> on Ubuntu.
> 
> I guess we could argue that the flavours probably shouldn't be
> listed on that page at all to make it clearer.
> 
> Kate also reminded me on IRC that she has an action item to at
> least remove mentions of derivatives across all the official Ubuntu
> websites. The wiki will always be trickier as people (such as that
> DerivativeTeam I never heard about) can write whatever they
> want...
> 
Fair enough...and true.

Thanks,
- -Robbie

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"Don't make me angry...you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
 -Bruce Banner
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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Stéphane Graber]

On 06/21/2012 03:34 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> On 06/21/2012 02:00 PM, Stéphane Graber wrote:
>> On 06/21/2012 02:34 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote:
>>> So we've clearly heard the opinion of Kubuntu...are there any other
>>> derivatives who wish to contribute to this discussion.  I for one, would
>>> be interested in knowing/hearing how these suggested changes impact them.
>>>
>>> -Robbie
>>
>> Starting with just a bit of nitpicking but it's something we agreed at
>> UDS that we'd try to get fixed in everyone's mind :)
>> We're "flavours" not "derivatives", "flavours" are fully integrated in
>> the Ubuntu project and have been recognized as such by the various
>> governance boards. I usually consider "derivatives" as referring to our
>> downstreams like mint where they're indeed a derived product.
> Fair enough, but then this wiki page probably needs changing to reflect
> this:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives

I also thought that page was wrong initially but it's actually kind of
right.

You'll notice that the flavours are listed separately under a flavours
heading on that page, and what's listed afterwards are proper
"derivatives" as in, out of the archive, custom spin based on Ubuntu.

I guess we could argue that the flavours probably shouldn't be listed on
that page at all to make it clearer.

Kate also reminded me on IRC that she has an action item to at least
remove mentions of derivatives across all the official Ubuntu websites.
The wiki will always be trickier as people (such as that DerivativeTeam
I never heard about) can write whatever they want...

> 
>>
>> Now, speaking for Edubuntu, we don't feel like we could increase our
>> testing frequency as we'll be increasing the number of platforms that
>> we'll be supporting this cycle, don't have a lot of testers and
>> generally don't feel the need for it.
>>
>> In the past we were only supporting a desktop installation on i386 and
>> amd64. This cycle we're extending the desktop support to i386, amd64 and
>> armhf.
>> On top of that, we'll be introducing Edubuntu Server this cycle, that'll
>> still be installed from our single media but will add a good dozen of
>> extra services to test.
>>
>>
>> The upstreams Edubuntu is working with are perfectly aware of our
>> milestones and freeze periods and make sure their releases land on time
>> so we have to ask for very little freeze exceptions or last minute
>> upload (I don't think we asked for much more than 2 FFe last cycle).
>>
>> Changing the way we work after we agreed on the release schedule for
>> this release would confuse our contributors and upstreams with no clear
>> benefit for us.
>>
>>
>> There are plenty of really good changes to the archive that are planned
>> for this cycle as part of the archive reorg and increasing the use of
>> -proposed, still with my Edubuntu release team hat on I don't think
>> piling up changes is a good idea.
>> I'd rather we do what we agreed on at UDS, try to encourage additional
>> daily testing (because that never hurts, doesn't cost any development
>> time and is beneficial) and discuss the next steps at the next UDS when
>> we have concrete feedback on how these changes went.
> 
> Thanks for the feedback Stephane. I think you've make some valid and
> reasonable points that we should consider.
> 
> 


-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com



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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Robbie Williamson]

On 06/21/2012 02:14 PM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Thursday, June 21, 2012 12:12:06 PM Michael Casadevall wrote:
>> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> It has come to my attention that my emails in this thread have sounded
>> somewhat accusatory towards both members of Canonical and Ubuntu.
>>
>> This was not my intent, and I apologize the way I may have came
>> across, and hope that any party who was offended may find it in their
>> hearts to forgive me.
>>
>> As such, I shall recluse myself from this discussion for now.
>> Michael
> 
> I find that surprising and very unfortunate.  I wouldn't have expected any 
> members of the Ubuntu community to be offended by a good honest discussion of 
> ideas.
> 

FTR, I'm *not* implyng Michael of doing this, but there is a difference
between a "discussion of ideas" and inflamatory and incorrect
accusations/assumptions. This thread has clearly "gone of the rails" a
bit from it's original intent, thus stirring up emotions and I suspect
poking wounds made from other unrelated changes in Ubuntu.  I've valued
Michael's input on this thread, and would certainly hope if he has any
more constructive input to contribute...to do so.

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 03:27:01 PM Nicholas Skaggs wrote:
> If I may speak for myself here, my goal is to encourage ubuntu as a 
> project to be a leader in open source in the realm of quality. It's what 
> I care about and I hope to be a part of making happen. My work at 
> Canonical aligns with that in a very harmonious way. In no way do I wish 
> to close out or marginalize flavors or other QA teams -- I trust my work 
> has shown this to be quite the opposite.
> 
> A brief example for illustration; in the past I have personally helped 
> test some flavors images, and during the 'adopt an iso' campaign last 
> cycle, while I was campaigning to help ensure a quality iso for ubuntu, 
> I helped instruct people who wanted to test flavors images. This grows 
> the ubuntu community as a whole and is a positive thing for the project. 
> We have things in common and I encourage collaboration across flavors 
> and teams (ubuntu included!).
> 
> In this example, the important distinction to make is that while I 
> helped test or encouraged others to test a flavors image, I won't claim 
> responsibility for assuring quality on that image or ensuring it gets 
> released. That of course is up to the flavors teams, and I would not 
> usurp management or responsibility away from those teams.My primary 
> focus is upon ubuntu and ensuring a healthy testing community which is 
> able to help assure quality for each ubuntu release. This helps everyone 
> who uses ubuntu in direct and indirect ways, including flavors. A 
> healthy ubuntu QA community makes for a healthier ubuntu community.

I agree and certainly appreciate your efforts to sustain and build QA effort 
across the Ubuntu project.  

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Robbie Williamson]

On 06/21/2012 02:00 PM, Stéphane Graber wrote:
> On 06/21/2012 02:34 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote:
>> So we've clearly heard the opinion of Kubuntu...are there any other
>> derivatives who wish to contribute to this discussion.  I for one, would
>> be interested in knowing/hearing how these suggested changes impact them.
>>
>> -Robbie
> 
> Starting with just a bit of nitpicking but it's something we agreed at
> UDS that we'd try to get fixed in everyone's mind :)
> We're "flavours" not "derivatives", "flavours" are fully integrated in
> the Ubuntu project and have been recognized as such by the various
> governance boards. I usually consider "derivatives" as referring to our
> downstreams like mint where they're indeed a derived product.
Fair enough, but then this wiki page probably needs changing to reflect
this:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DerivativeTeam/Derivatives

> 
> Now, speaking for Edubuntu, we don't feel like we could increase our
> testing frequency as we'll be increasing the number of platforms that
> we'll be supporting this cycle, don't have a lot of testers and
> generally don't feel the need for it.
> 
> In the past we were only supporting a desktop installation on i386 and
> amd64. This cycle we're extending the desktop support to i386, amd64 and
> armhf.
> On top of that, we'll be introducing Edubuntu Server this cycle, that'll
> still be installed from our single media but will add a good dozen of
> extra services to test.
> 
> 
> The upstreams Edubuntu is working with are perfectly aware of our
> milestones and freeze periods and make sure their releases land on time
> so we have to ask for very little freeze exceptions or last minute
> upload (I don't think we asked for much more than 2 FFe last cycle).
> 
> Changing the way we work after we agreed on the release schedule for
> this release would confuse our contributors and upstreams with no clear
> benefit for us.
> 
> 
> There are plenty of really good changes to the archive that are planned
> for this cycle as part of the archive reorg and increasing the use of
> -proposed, still with my Edubuntu release team hat on I don't think
> piling up changes is a good idea.
> I'd rather we do what we agreed on at UDS, try to encourage additional
> daily testing (because that never hurts, doesn't cost any development
> time and is beneficial) and discuss the next steps at the next UDS when
> we have concrete feedback on how these changes went.

Thanks for the feedback Stephane. I think you've make some valid and
reasonable points that we should consider.


-- 
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 -Bruce Banner

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jono Bacon]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 12:20 PM, Andrew Starr-Bochicchio
 wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Michael Casadevall
>  wrote:
>> It has come to my attention that my emails in this thread have sounded
>> somewhat accusatory towards both members of Canonical and Ubuntu.
>>
>> This was not my intent, and I apologize the way I may have came
>> across, and hope that any party who was offended may find it in their
>> hearts to forgive me.
>>
>> As such, I shall recluse myself from this discussion for now.
>
> I find that to be an extremely saddening outcome. I for one found your
> contributions to this discussion both constructive and clarifying.

Speaking personally, I didn't find your comments offensive, it is
important for us to have this discussion; my only critique would be
that you were more pointed in some parts than you needed to be.

   Jono

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Michael Casadevall
 wrote:
> It has come to my attention that my emails in this thread have sounded
> somewhat accusatory towards both members of Canonical and Ubuntu.
>
> This was not my intent, and I apologize the way I may have came
> across, and hope that any party who was offended may find it in their
> hearts to forgive me.
>
> As such, I shall recluse myself from this discussion for now.

I find that to be an extremely saddening outcome. I for one found your
contributions to this discussion both constructive and clarifying.

-- Andrew Starr-Bochicchio

   Ubuntu Developer 
   Debian Maintainer

   PGP/GPG Key ID: D53FDCB1

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 12:12:06 PM Michael Casadevall wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> It has come to my attention that my emails in this thread have sounded
> somewhat accusatory towards both members of Canonical and Ubuntu.
> 
> This was not my intent, and I apologize the way I may have came
> across, and hope that any party who was offended may find it in their
> hearts to forgive me.
> 
> As such, I shall recluse myself from this discussion for now.
> Michael

I find that surprising and very unfortunate.  I wouldn't have expected any 
members of the Ubuntu community to be offended by a good honest discussion of 
ideas.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Michael Casadevall]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

It has come to my attention that my emails in this thread have sounded
somewhat accusatory towards both members of Canonical and Ubuntu.

This was not my intent, and I apologize the way I may have came
across, and hope that any party who was offended may find it in their
hearts to forgive me.

As such, I shall recluse myself from this discussion for now.
Michael
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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Stéphane Graber]

On 06/21/2012 02:34 PM, Robbie Williamson wrote:
> So we've clearly heard the opinion of Kubuntu...are there any other
> derivatives who wish to contribute to this discussion.  I for one, would
> be interested in knowing/hearing how these suggested changes impact them.
> 
> -Robbie

Starting with just a bit of nitpicking but it's something we agreed at
UDS that we'd try to get fixed in everyone's mind :)
We're "flavours" not "derivatives", "flavours" are fully integrated in
the Ubuntu project and have been recognized as such by the various
governance boards. I usually consider "derivatives" as referring to our
downstreams like mint where they're indeed a derived product.

Now, speaking for Edubuntu, we don't feel like we could increase our
testing frequency as we'll be increasing the number of platforms that
we'll be supporting this cycle, don't have a lot of testers and
generally don't feel the need for it.

In the past we were only supporting a desktop installation on i386 and
amd64. This cycle we're extending the desktop support to i386, amd64 and
armhf.
On top of that, we'll be introducing Edubuntu Server this cycle, that'll
still be installed from our single media but will add a good dozen of
extra services to test.


The upstreams Edubuntu is working with are perfectly aware of our
milestones and freeze periods and make sure their releases land on time
so we have to ask for very little freeze exceptions or last minute
upload (I don't think we asked for much more than 2 FFe last cycle).

Changing the way we work after we agreed on the release schedule for
this release would confuse our contributors and upstreams with no clear
benefit for us.


There are plenty of really good changes to the archive that are planned
for this cycle as part of the archive reorg and increasing the use of
-proposed, still with my Edubuntu release team hat on I don't think
piling up changes is a good idea.
I'd rather we do what we agreed on at UDS, try to encourage additional
daily testing (because that never hurts, doesn't cost any development
time and is beneficial) and discuss the next steps at the next UDS when
we have concrete feedback on how these changes went.

-- 
Stéphane Graber
Ubuntu developer
http://www.ubuntu.com



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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 01:34:18 PM Robbie Williamson wrote:
> So we've clearly heard the opinion of Kubuntu...are there any other
> derivatives who wish to contribute to this discussion.  I for one, would
> be interested in knowing/hearing how these suggested changes impact them.

FWIW, while I am a Kubuntu developer, I'm also on the Ubuntu release team and 
active in a very broad range of activities across the distribution.  My 
opinions aren't just from a Kubuntu perspective.  I can tell you that every 
non-Canonical flavor struggles every milestone to get image testing done.  "Do 
more, more often" just isn't going to happen in any of these flavors.

If Ubuntu Desktop/Server want to take a leap of faith that this'll all turn 
out great, I don't expect I'm going to change anyone's mind, just take the 
rest of us with you.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:25:09 AM Jono Bacon wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Scott Kitterman  
wrote:
> >> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its resources
> >> on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
> > 
> > I'm crystal clear that the Canonical community team's QA effort is focused
> > on trying to get the broader community to do QA on Canonical products.  I
> > think that's quite unfortunate.  Rather than just trying to get free
> > labor for Canonical, I would have hoped you wanted to make QA better for
> > the entire Ubuntu project.
> > 
> > This is in marked contrast to Daniel Holbach's efforts (which I've been
> > watching and appreciating, but not had much time to get involved with) to
> > bring new blood into the Ubuntu development process.  He's pursing the
> > kind of holistic approach I'd hope to see from your entire team.
> 
> We *are* working to "make QA better for the entire Ubuntu project",
> but the point is that our focus is on *Ubuntu* and our specific
> efforts don't extend to coordinating flavor testing. This doesn't mean
> we are ignoring our flavors, or are not happy to offer advice or
> guidance, but my team (Daniel included) is not focusing their efforts
> on helping specific flavors achieve their goals.
> 
> I myself am surprised that you find this surprising: while many of our
> efforts and programmes can bring value to the flavors (e.g. general
> developer growth, working with upstreams, translations work etc), we
> have rarely if ever assigned staff time to delivering on flavor work
> items.
> 
> This is purely and simple about resourcing. Canonical is a company,
> and it needs to invest its resources carefully: sure, we would love to
> support all the flavors with more staff time (not just Kubuntu), but
> we simply don't have the resources to do so. Importantly, though, we
> are not stopping flavors from doing this work themselves...we are
> still providing the infrastructure and help and guidance we can offer
> in doing this work.

We're talking about two different Ubuntus.  You're talking about Ubuntu the 
product defined by a set of images/metapackages/etc drawn from a subset of the 
Ubuntu Linux distribution's archive.  I'm talking about Ubuntu as a project 
which is bigger than either of those.  

Scott K

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Call for translations: catfish

[Sean Davis]

Hello everyone,

There's some big changes coming for the handy GTK+ search utility 
"catfish".  But along with these changes, we are in need of some fresh 
translations.


If you'd like to help out, check out the project page on Launchpad:

https://launchpad.net/catfish-search


Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

-- Sean Davis

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:28:15 AM Michael Casadevall wrote:
> 2. Images that have out-opted are free to ignore freezes for their
> respective package sets (feature freeze and such still apply of course).
> 
> As a thought, while the packageset in release must be frozen if one of
> the architectures used by that image do not opt-out, we can simply
> enabled proposed on the dailies to allow unbroken development efforts.

I'd define it as not in a frozen package set, since some packages are in 
multiple sets, but I agree.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Robbie Williamson]

So we've clearly heard the opinion of Kubuntu...are there any other
derivatives who wish to contribute to this discussion.  I for one, would
be interested in knowing/hearing how these suggested changes impact them.

-Robbie

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Michael Casadevall]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 06/21/2012 11:20 AM, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:09:54 AM Michael Casadevall wrote:
>> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1
>> 
>> On 06/21/2012 09:43 AM, Jono Bacon wrote:
>>> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Michael Casadevall
>>> 
>>>  wrote:
>>> If we had more resources we would love to provide help
>>> for the flavors, and we are certainly happy to offer
>>> any guidance and advice, with with our current
>>> resources and staffing, Nick doesn't have the bandwidth
>>> to handle more the than the Ubuntu ISOs and associated
>>> testing. Saying that, I know Nick is in contact with
>>> many of the flavors to ensure they get the support they
>>> need to set up their own comprehensive testing plans.
 
 The first I heard of any of this was when this email was sent
 to u-devel. To be frank, changes of this magnitude should
 have been discussed in seasons at UDS-Q, and not in hallway
 conversations where many of the affected parties were not
 present.
>>> 
>>> What changes of magnitude? We had already made it pretty clear
>>> that my team is not focused on flavors (historically we have
>>> never focused on flavors in our committed work items and always
>>> on Ubuntu), and all I am outlining here is the cadence in how
>>> Nick we be conducting his work. This is purely a way in which I
>>> choose to manage my resources to serve Ubuntu best.
>>> 
>>> Yes, these plans were not discussed at UDS, because they have 
>>> evolved since UDS, but Nick quite clearly laid out his testing 
>>> strategy at UDS (which is not to dissimilar from this...he had 
>>> scheduled testing plans for milestones and interim dailies).
>> 
>> It has already been established by Rick that we can increase
>> Canonical QA efforts without changing the milestone process. I'm
>> embedding Rick's proposal here:
>> 
>> On 06/17/2012 11:36 PM, Rick Spencer wrote:
>>> (I changed the subject to better represent this branch of the
>> 
>> conversation)
>> 
>>> This discussion suggests that we don't need to release special 
>>> alpha and beta ISOs, but we do need: 1. A cadence of testing 2.
>>> A trial run (or 2) of spinning ISOs 3. Development targets
>>> 
>>> Therefore, I propose we: 1. Stop with the alphas and betas and
>>> win back all of the development effort 2. *Increase* the
>>> cadence of ISO testing to whatever we want or whatever the
>>> community team can manage 3. Spin a trial ISO near what is not
>>> beta time (maybe around current kernel freeze?) 4. Spin ISOs
>>> for release candidates 5. Maintain the current Alpha and Beta
>>> designations as development targets only (i.e. don't spin a
>>> special image for them).
>>> 
>>> Cheers, Rick
>> 
>> The justification for this as I understand it is that the main
>> Ubuntu image is moving to more consistent and constant QA
>> practice, thus when combined with the active use of -proposed
>> during freezes, and other tools would render the freezes and
>> associates images moot.
>> 
>> We've already established that we can increase QA frequency
>> without changing the freeze/milestone process, and once the
>> -proposed queue is fully functional, no development effort will
>> be lost for those who do not wish to partake in testing; its
>> simply a matter then of enabling -proposed on ones machine
>> 
 Many images such of Kubuntu have worked to have the various 
 milestones and deadlines set in ways that allow them to 
 incorperate the correct versions of their upstream packages
 (i.e. KDE 4.9 release dates are more or less timed that the
 RC and final will be available for Alpha 3 and Beta 1
 respectively).
 
 Personal opinions aside, I object to large-scale changes in 
 release planning after everyone already agreed to the
 current Quantal release schedule.
>>> 
>>> The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones
>>> they want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for
>>> the flavors in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how
>>> Nick will be working: the only output of this work is assured
>>> mandatory test case testing and this testing uncovering any
>>> bugs. As I said earlier, this work is independent of whether we
>>> remove milestones or not.
>> 
>> The Kubuntu team wants to have standard alpha and beta images
>> (i.e. the system that is in place and currently works for them).
>> 
>> As a member of the release team, and someone who has seen the
>> current system of freeze/milestone release catch image breaking
>> bugs, I want the official desktop/server images to be
>> cross-checked by the community by the same process that everyone
>> else uses.
>> 
> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus
> its resources on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
 
 To what extent?
>>> 
>>> To the extent that Canonical provides investment in Ubuntu, as
>>> part of this inve

Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jono Bacon]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:11 AM, Scott Kitterman  wrote:
>> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its resources
>> on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
>
> I'm crystal clear that the Canonical community team's QA effort is focused on
> trying to get the broader community to do QA on Canonical products.  I think
> that's quite unfortunate.  Rather than just trying to get free labor for
> Canonical, I would have hoped you wanted to make QA better for the entire
> Ubuntu project.
>
> This is in marked contrast to Daniel Holbach's efforts (which I've been
> watching and appreciating, but not had much time to get involved with) to
> bring new blood into the Ubuntu development process.  He's pursing the kind of
> holistic approach I'd hope to see from your entire team.

We *are* working to "make QA better for the entire Ubuntu project",
but the point is that our focus is on *Ubuntu* and our specific
efforts don't extend to coordinating flavor testing. This doesn't mean
we are ignoring our flavors, or are not happy to offer advice or
guidance, but my team (Daniel included) is not focusing their efforts
on helping specific flavors achieve their goals.

I myself am surprised that you find this surprising: while many of our
efforts and programmes can bring value to the flavors (e.g. general
developer growth, working with upstreams, translations work etc), we
have rarely if ever assigned staff time to delivering on flavor work
items.

This is purely and simple about resourcing. Canonical is a company,
and it needs to invest its resources carefully: sure, we would love to
support all the flavors with more staff time (not just Kubuntu), but
we simply don't have the resources to do so. Importantly, though, we
are not stopping flavors from doing this work themselves...we are
still providing the infrastructure and help and guidance we can offer
in doing this work.

   Jono

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:09:54 AM Michael Casadevall wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On 06/21/2012 09:43 AM, Jono Bacon wrote:
> > On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Michael Casadevall
> > 
> >  wrote:
> > If we had more resources we would love to provide help for
> > the flavors, and we are certainly happy to offer any
> > guidance and advice, with with our current resources and
> > staffing, Nick doesn't have the bandwidth to handle more
> > the than the Ubuntu ISOs and associated testing. Saying
> > that, I know Nick is in contact with many of the flavors to
> > ensure they get the support they need to set up their own
> > comprehensive testing plans.
> >> 
> >> The first I heard of any of this was when this email was sent to
> >> u-devel. To be frank, changes of this magnitude should have been
> >> discussed in seasons at UDS-Q, and not in hallway conversations
> >> where many of the affected parties were not present.
> > 
> > What changes of magnitude? We had already made it pretty clear that
> > my team is not focused on flavors (historically we have never
> > focused on flavors in our committed work items and always on
> > Ubuntu), and all I am outlining here is the cadence in how Nick we
> > be conducting his work. This is purely a way in which I choose to
> > manage my resources to serve Ubuntu best.
> > 
> > Yes, these plans were not discussed at UDS, because they have
> > evolved since UDS, but Nick quite clearly laid out his testing
> > strategy at UDS (which is not to dissimilar from this...he had
> > scheduled testing plans for milestones and interim dailies).
> 
> It has already been established by Rick that we can increase Canonical
> QA efforts without changing the milestone process. I'm embedding
> Rick's proposal here:
> 
> On 06/17/2012 11:36 PM, Rick Spencer wrote:
> > (I changed the subject to better represent this branch of the
> 
> conversation)
> 
> > This discussion suggests that we don't need to release special
> > alpha and beta ISOs, but we do need: 1. A cadence of testing 2. A
> > trial run (or 2) of spinning ISOs 3. Development targets
> > 
> > Therefore, I propose we: 1. Stop with the alphas and betas and win
> > back all of the development effort 2. *Increase* the cadence of ISO
> > testing to whatever we want or whatever the community team can
> > manage 3. Spin a trial ISO near what is not beta time (maybe around
> > current kernel freeze?) 4. Spin ISOs for release candidates 5.
> > Maintain the current Alpha and Beta designations as development
> > targets only (i.e. don't spin a special image for them).
> > 
> > Cheers, Rick
> 
> The justification for this as I understand it is that the main Ubuntu
> image is moving to more consistent and constant QA practice, thus when
> combined with the active use of -proposed during freezes, and other
> tools would render the freezes and associates images moot.
> 
> We've already established that we can increase QA frequency without
> changing the freeze/milestone process, and once the -proposed queue is
> fully functional, no development effort will be lost for those who do
> not wish to partake in testing; its simply a matter then of enabling
>  -proposed on ones machine
> 
> >> Many images such of Kubuntu have worked to have the various
> >> milestones and deadlines set in ways that allow them to
> >> incorperate the correct versions of their upstream packages (i.e.
> >> KDE 4.9 release dates are more or less timed that the RC and
> >> final will be available for Alpha 3 and Beta 1 respectively).
> >> 
> >> Personal opinions aside, I object to large-scale changes in
> >> release planning after everyone already agreed to the current
> >> Quantal release schedule.
> > 
> > The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they
> > want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the
> > flavors in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will
> > be working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test
> > case testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said
> > earlier, this work is independent of whether we remove milestones
> > or not.
> 
> The Kubuntu team wants to have standard alpha and beta images (i.e.
> the system that is in place and currently works for them).
> 
> As a member of the release team, and someone who has seen the current
> system of freeze/milestone release catch image breaking bugs, I want
> the official desktop/server images to be cross-checked by the
> community by the same process that everyone else uses.
> 
> >>> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its
> >>> resources on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
> >> 
> >> To what extent?
> > 
> > To the extent that Canonical provides investment in Ubuntu, as part
> > of this investment is paying Nick's salary, and as Nick's manager I
> > choose how we resource his time and efforts. How we resource Nick
> > is not a community deci

Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:14:05 PM Jono Bacon wrote:
> Well to be clear, Nick is one member of the Ubuntu community who is
> focused on testing. Other people are welcome to coordinate testing
> campaigns and get others interested and excited about testing, but
> Nick's focus is explicitly on the Ubuntu ISOs. Of course, if community
> members want to volunteer to help test the flavors then that is great.
> 
> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its resources
> on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.

I'm crystal clear that the Canonical community team's QA effort is focused on 
trying to get the broader community to do QA on Canonical products.  I think 
that's quite unfortunate.  Rather than just trying to get free labor for 
Canonical, I would have hoped you wanted to make QA better for the entire 
Ubuntu project.

This is in marked contrast to Daniel Holbach's efforts (which I've been 
watching and appreciating, but not had much time to get involved with) to 
bring new blood into the Ubuntu development process.  He's pursing the kind of 
holistic approach I'd hope to see from your entire team.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Michael Casadevall]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 06/21/2012 09:43 AM, Jono Bacon wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Michael Casadevall 
>  wrote:
> If we had more resources we would love to provide help for 
> the flavors, and we are certainly happy to offer any 
> guidance and advice, with with our current resources and 
> staffing, Nick doesn't have the bandwidth to handle more 
> the than the Ubuntu ISOs and associated testing. Saying 
> that, I know Nick is in contact with many of the flavors to
> ensure they get the support they need to set up their own
> comprehensive testing plans.
 
>> 
>> The first I heard of any of this was when this email was sent to 
>> u-devel. To be frank, changes of this magnitude should have been 
>> discussed in seasons at UDS-Q, and not in hallway conversations 
>> where many of the affected parties were not present.
> 
> What changes of magnitude? We had already made it pretty clear that
> my team is not focused on flavors (historically we have never 
> focused on flavors in our committed work items and always on 
> Ubuntu), and all I am outlining here is the cadence in how Nick we 
> be conducting his work. This is purely a way in which I choose to 
> manage my resources to serve Ubuntu best.
> 
> Yes, these plans were not discussed at UDS, because they have 
> evolved since UDS, but Nick quite clearly laid out his testing 
> strategy at UDS (which is not to dissimilar from this...he had 
> scheduled testing plans for milestones and interim dailies).
> 

It has already been established by Rick that we can increase Canonical
QA efforts without changing the milestone process. I'm embedding
Rick's proposal here:

On 06/17/2012 11:36 PM, Rick Spencer wrote:
> (I changed the subject to better represent this branch of the
conversation)
> 
> This discussion suggests that we don't need to release special 
> alpha and beta ISOs, but we do need: 1. A cadence of testing 2. A 
> trial run (or 2) of spinning ISOs 3. Development targets
> 
> Therefore, I propose we: 1. Stop with the alphas and betas and win 
> back all of the development effort 2. *Increase* the cadence of ISO
> testing to whatever we want or whatever the community team can
> manage 3. Spin a trial ISO near what is not beta time (maybe around
> current kernel freeze?) 4. Spin ISOs for release candidates 5.
> Maintain the current Alpha and Beta designations as development
> targets only (i.e. don't spin a special image for them).
> 
> Cheers, Rick

The justification for this as I understand it is that the main Ubuntu
image is moving to more consistent and constant QA practice, thus when
combined with the active use of -proposed during freezes, and other
tools would render the freezes and associates images moot.

We've already established that we can increase QA frequency without
changing the freeze/milestone process, and once the -proposed queue is
fully functional, no development effort will be lost for those who do
not wish to partake in testing; its simply a matter then of enabling
 -proposed on ones machine

>> Many images such of Kubuntu have worked to have the various 
>> milestones and deadlines set in ways that allow them to 
>> incorperate the correct versions of their upstream packages (i.e.
>> KDE 4.9 release dates are more or less timed that the RC and
>> final will be available for Alpha 3 and Beta 1 respectively).
>> 
>> Personal opinions aside, I object to large-scale changes in 
>> release planning after everyone already agreed to the current 
>> Quantal release schedule.
> 
> The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they 
> want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the 
> flavors in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will
> be working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test
> case testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said 
> earlier, this work is independent of whether we remove milestones 
> or not.
> 

The Kubuntu team wants to have standard alpha and beta images (i.e.
the system that is in place and currently works for them).

As a member of the release team, and someone who has seen the current
system of freeze/milestone release catch image breaking bugs, I want
the official desktop/server images to be cross-checked by the
community by the same process that everyone else uses.

>>> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its 
>>> resources on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
>>> 
>> 
>> To what extent?
> 
> To the extent that Canonical provides investment in Ubuntu, as part
> of this investment is paying Nick's salary, and as Nick's manager I
> choose how we resource his time and efforts. How we resource Nick
> is not a community decision.
> 

I have no argument that Canonical directs Nick's work in whatever way
we see fit. However, as someone paid by Canonical to ensure the high
quality of our ARM images, I have a vested interest in knowing if I'm
covered

Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday, June 21, 2012 06:52:58 PM Rick Spencer wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Jono Bacon 
> 
> > The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they
> > want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the flavors
> > in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will be
> > working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test case
> > testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said earlier, this
> > work is independent of whether we remove milestones or not.
> 
> I think the terminology here is the source of some confusion. I think
> when you (Jono) say "milestones" people hear specifically the already
> defined "alpha and beta" Milestones.  I don't think you mean that. I
> think you are using the term "milestones" differently, to just mean
> "chosen dates for testing".
> 
> I think it's fair to say that flavors can choose a higher frequency
> for a testing cadence than just the alpha and beta dates,

Yes, but that's not what's being discussed.  What's being discusses is more 
testing at shorter intervals in order to abolish the alphas and the betas.   
Once they are gone, then we don't have the milestones to organize around 
anymore.  It takes Canonical employees to execute a release milestone.  Doing 
an Alpha/Beta without Canonical support isn't currently something that can be 
done.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jono Bacon]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:52 AM, Rick Spencer
 wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Jono Bacon 
>>
>> The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they
>> want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the flavors
>> in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will be
>> working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test case
>> testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said earlier, this
>> work is independent of whether we remove milestones or not.
>
> I think the terminology here is the source of some confusion. I think
> when you (Jono) say "milestones" people hear specifically the already
> defined "alpha and beta" Milestones.  I don't think you mean that. I
> think you are using the term "milestones" differently, to just mean
> "chosen dates for testing".
>
> I think it's fair to say that flavors can choose a higher frequency
> for a testing cadence than just the alpha and beta dates,

Agreed: to be clear, when I say "milestones" I am referring to a
"point in time when something happens", and in the context of this
discussion testing I mean "the point in time when a testing run kicks
off". Apologies for the confusion.

   Jono

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Rick Spencer]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:43 PM, Jono Bacon 
>
> The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they
> want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the flavors
> in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will be
> working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test case
> testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said earlier, this
> work is independent of whether we remove milestones or not.

I think the terminology here is the source of some confusion. I think
when you (Jono) say "milestones" people hear specifically the already
defined "alpha and beta" Milestones.  I don't think you mean that. I
think you are using the term "milestones" differently, to just mean
"chosen dates for testing".

I think it's fair to say that flavors can choose a higher frequency
for a testing cadence than just the alpha and beta dates,

Cheers, Rick

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Jono Bacon]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Michael Casadevall
 wrote:
 If we had more resources we would love to provide help for the
 flavors, and we are certainly happy to offer any guidance and
 advice, with with our current resources and staffing, Nick
 doesn't have the bandwidth to handle more the than the Ubuntu
 ISOs and associated testing. Saying that, I know Nick is in
 contact with many of the flavors to ensure they get the support
 they need to set up their own comprehensive testing plans.
>>>
>
> The first I heard of any of this was when this email was sent to
> u-devel. To be frank, changes of this magnitude should have been
> discussed in seasons at UDS-Q, and not in hallway conversations where
> many of the affected parties were not present.

What changes of magnitude? We had already made it pretty clear that my
team is not focused on flavors (historically we have never focused on
flavors in our committed work items and always on Ubuntu), and all I
am outlining here is the cadence in how Nick we be conducting his
work. This is purely a way in which I choose to manage my resources to
serve Ubuntu best.

Yes, these plans were not discussed at UDS, because they have evolved
since UDS, but Nick quite clearly laid out his testing strategy at UDS
(which is not to dissimilar from this...he had scheduled testing plans
for milestones and interim dailies).

> Many images such of Kubuntu have worked to have the various milestones
> and deadlines set in ways that allow them to incorperate the correct
> versions of their upstream packages (i.e. KDE 4.9 release dates are
> more or less timed that the RC and final will be available for Alpha 3
> and Beta 1 respectively).
>
> Personal opinions aside, I object to large-scale changes in release
> planning after everyone already agreed to the current Quantal release
> schedule.

The Kubuntu team are welcome to determine whatever milestones they
want - no one is suggesting anything needs to change for the flavors
in their testing cadence. I am purely stating how Nick will be
working: the only output of this work is assured mandatory test case
testing and this testing uncovering any bugs. As I said earlier, this
work is independent of whether we remove milestones or not.

>> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its
>> resources on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
>>
>
> To what extent?

To the extent that Canonical provides investment in Ubuntu, as part of
this investment is paying Nick's salary, and as Nick's manager I
choose how we resource his time and efforts. How we resource Nick is
not a community decision.

> As it stands, what is proposed will not only hinder but likely cost
> considerable QA coverage of the many images that are
> "community-supported". It is clear that non-Canonical backed images
> simply can not support a rolling-QA testing plan, and depend on the
> milestones system.
>
> By changing how a minority of how images are being tested, it will
> only serve to create confusion, and complications. As a release
> manager, am I now to track down each team, make sure from them that
> they've met whatever QA schedule they've set for themselves, and then
> release off that?
>
> As it stands, the vast majority of image testing comes at milestones,
> and often picks up people who are otherwise uninvolved in a flavors
> development. There has often been calls to ask for additional testers
> for X image in #ubuntu-testing should coverage be lacking, which have
> been always answered.

As I have said a few times now...If a flavor can't maintain the same
level of testing, the flavor can just do the testing it can cope with.
This might mean just doing the testing with the current cadence of
milestones: just because I am ramping up our manual testing efforts
with Nick does not mean anyone else has to change their own testing
cadence.

Flavors are in charge of their own destiny, and this includes testing cadence.

>> To be clear, the testing cadence is up to whatever the flavor wants
>> it to be; I am not suggesting we impose this two-week cadence on
>> anyone other than me imposing it on Nick. :-)
>>
>
> Then why change the existing system?
>
> Nothing about the existing system will prevent the Canonical QA
> efforts from implementing this.

You are conflating two different things: testing cadence and
milestones. To be clear: the cadence of Nick's testing has nothing to
do with milestones and whether we choose to have them or not have
them. My only point here is that I am disconnecting Nick's cadence
from milestones so that if we do choose to not have them in the
future, nothing changes.

>> Naturally our flavors generally don't pay people to coordinate
>> this kind of testing (maybe Blue Systems could invest here for
>> Kubuntu?), but there is no requirement for the flavors to test
>> every two weeks. If you folks want to test once a month or once
>> every six weeks, then go ahead and do that. Importantly though, as
>

Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Rick Spencer]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 6:02 PM, Michael Casadevall
 wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 06/20/2012 11:14 PM, Jono Bacon wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 9:24 PM, Scott Kitterman
>  wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 09:13:17 PM Jono Bacon wrote:
 On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Scott Kitterman
> 
>>> wrote:
>> For our current Ubuntu ISOs. Flavors currently are
>> coordinating
> their
>> own testing efforts. They could either latch into the two
>> week cadence, or use their own cadence if desired.
>
>
> All flavors as it stands right now are actually coordinated to a
> common testing and QA cycle based around milestones, as set forth by
> the release manager and the manifest. At each milestone, all images,
> regardless of backing are tested. If they fail they're removed from
> the manifest, and are excluded from the release.
>
> I find it somewhat unfortunate that the "community" testing
> efforts exclude the community sponsored flavors in the Ubuntu
> project.  I
> would
> have hoped that the community team was not just about
> Canonical's products.

 This shouldn't be a particularly big surprise; Canonical
 supports our flavors with infrastructure, but we primarily
 focus our engineering and community team staff members on
 Ubuntu.
>
> No one is objecting to additional QA efforts dedicated to Canonical
> images. That being said, I've yet to see a stated reason on why this
> additional QA drive requires changing the milestone process. As Scott
> clearly points out what is being proposed will change the
> QA/milestone/release process will cause a fair bit of large grief for
> all flavors.
Nothing is being proposed by Jono other than saying they will strive
to increase the testing cadence for Ubuntu, which as you state is not
related to alphas and betas.

Cheers, Rick

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Michael Casadevall]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On 06/20/2012 11:14 PM, Jono Bacon wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 9:24 PM, Scott Kitterman
 wrote:
>> On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 09:13:17 PM Jono Bacon wrote:
>>> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 8:52 PM, Scott Kitterman

>> wrote:
> For our current Ubuntu ISOs. Flavors currently are
> coordinating
their
> own testing efforts. They could either latch into the two
> week cadence, or use their own cadence if desired.
 

All flavors as it stands right now are actually coordinated to a
common testing and QA cycle based around milestones, as set forth by
the release manager and the manifest. At each milestone, all images,
regardless of backing are tested. If they fail they're removed from
the manifest, and are excluded from the release.

 I find it somewhat unfortunate that the "community" testing
 efforts exclude the community sponsored flavors in the Ubuntu
 project.  I
would
 have hoped that the community team was not just about
 Canonical's products.
>>> 
>>> This shouldn't be a particularly big surprise; Canonical
>>> supports our flavors with infrastructure, but we primarily
>>> focus our engineering and community team staff members on
>>> Ubuntu.

No one is objecting to additional QA efforts dedicated to Canonical
images. That being said, I've yet to see a stated reason on why this
additional QA drive requires changing the milestone process. As Scott
clearly points out what is being proposed will change the
QA/milestone/release process will cause a fair bit of large grief for
all flavors.

I have regularly tested those images and others such as Studio and
Edubuntu on x86 and ports architectures when I have additional cycles
to spend, and spent several cycles making sure Kubuntu's armel images
were in a good state until hardware became more prevalent.

>>> 
>>> If we had more resources we would love to provide help for the 
>>> flavors, and we are certainly happy to offer any guidance and
>>> advice, with with our current resources and staffing, Nick
>>> doesn't have the bandwidth to handle more the than the Ubuntu
>>> ISOs and associated testing. Saying that, I know Nick is in
>>> contact with many of the flavors to ensure they get the support
>>> they need to set up their own comprehensive testing plans.
>> 

The first I heard of any of this was when this email was sent to
u-devel. To be frank, changes of this magnitude should have been
discussed in seasons at UDS-Q, and not in hallway conversations where
many of the affected parties were not present.

Many images such of Kubuntu have worked to have the various milestones
and deadlines set in ways that allow them to incorperate the correct
versions of their upstream packages (i.e. KDE 4.9 release dates are
more or less timed that the RC and final will be available for Alpha 3
and Beta 1 respectively).

Personal opinions aside, I object to large-scale changes in release
planning after everyone already agreed to the current Quantal release
schedule.

>> Perhaps I misunderstood, but I thought that you were saying this
was about the
>> community team he had organized to support ISO testing.  Nothing
>> to
do with
>> Canonical resources.  I think that such a team should not be
focused on just
>> Canonical products.
>> 
>> As a Kubuntu developer trying to get Kubuntu images tested for
milestones,
>> I've often gotten a lot of help from Canonical people in Ubuntu
>> QA.  I appreciate that.  That's not what I'm talking about.
> 
> Well to be clear, Nick is one member of the Ubuntu community who
> is focused on testing. Other people are welcome to coordinate
> testing campaigns and get others interested and excited about
> testing, but Nick's focus is explicitly on the Ubuntu ISOs. Of
> course, if community members want to volunteer to help test the
> flavors then that is great.
> 
> I don't think it is unreasonable for Canonical to focus its
> resources on Ubuntu as opposed to the flavors.
> 

To what extent?

As it stands, what is proposed will not only hinder but likely cost
considerable QA coverage of the many images that are
"community-supported". It is clear that non-Canonical backed images
simply can not support a rolling-QA testing plan, and depend on the
milestones system.

By changing how a minority of how images are being tested, it will
only serve to create confusion, and complications. As a release
manager, am I now to track down each team, make sure from them that
they've met whatever QA schedule they've set for themselves, and then
release off that?

As it stands, the vast majority of image testing comes at milestones,
and often picks up people who are otherwise uninvolved in a flavors
development. There has often been calls to ask for additional testers
for X image in #ubuntu-testing should coverage be lacking, which have
been always answered.

>> None of the non-Canonical flavors have the resources to pick up
>> the
pace of ISO
>> testing.  If Canonical is insistent

Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Didier Roche]

Le 21/06/2012 14:34, Kate Stewart a écrit :

So, removing the milestone freeze is completely aligned with that vision.

Challenge is that we don't have a good schedule of when the Unity drops
are going to happen and what features are emerging when.  The other
applications and products that work on top of Unity need to interface
with it need to get synchronized in some way, so that effective system
testing can occur.  Having predictable times when we plan to release an
image is a forcing function, in that they at least keep us focused on
making sure we have system testing going on and that the community
flavors, that are part of the Ubuntu project, can system test their
emerging bits on the evolving infrastructure with some degree of
confidence.
Upstream is going through structural changes and having different people 
working on technical debts. All of those, despite multiple demands and 
priority requests for the distro is making hard to give a definitive 
answer at the moment, unfortunately.


Didier

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Scott Kitterman]

On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:14:05 PM Jono Bacon wrote:
> My goal in this cycle is to ensure we have a regular testing cadence
> for Ubuntu and not based on milestones; if the Kubuntu team want to
> have your own internal milestones for targeting work and testing, I
> see no reason why you can't do that on your own schedule.

No.  We can't.  It requires Canonical resources to do a release.

Scott K

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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Kate Stewart]

On Thu, 2012-06-21 at 10:11 +0100, Didier Roche wrote:
> This cycle, the next step for Unity and all related components is that 
> each release is potentially the last one that is uploaded to ubuntu 
> until the finale release. So, each version is a possible release 
> candidate for Quantal. I do not want anymore to see half-backed unity 
> features coming in. This is only possible now thanks to the huge quality 
> increase we had last cycle and that we finally reached the feature level 
> that we can expect from a UI. So, all extras should be precise, 
> polished, reliable before getting into ubuntu.

+1  :)
> 
> So, removing the milestone freeze is completely aligned with that vision.

Challenge is that we don't have a good schedule of when the Unity drops
are going to happen and what features are emerging when.  The other
applications and products that work on top of Unity need to interface
with it need to get synchronized in some way, so that effective system
testing can occur.  Having predictable times when we plan to release an
image is a forcing function, in that they at least keep us focused on
making sure we have system testing going on and that the community
flavors, that are part of the Ubuntu project, can system test their
emerging bits on the evolving infrastructure with some degree of
confidence. 

Additional system testing and snapshotting of images at more than just
the currently scheduled points would, of course, be very welcome and
help with improving the quality, especially early in the 6 month
cycle.  ;) 

> >
> > Question 3: shall we increase the rate of manual testing?
> > This question also arose in the thread. I think there is widespread
> > consensus that we should do this, and it is not actually related to
> > the other questions.
> > Community Team, is it feasible to increase the rate of full manual
> > testing runs to every 2 weeks or similar?
> It was a hard job to keep regular contributors (reporting high quality 
> results)  tight redoing serious testing every 2 weeks for unity 
> releases, but I'm completely confident Nick can do this job. :)

+1   :)   Big challenge for him and the QA team will be when the 12.04.1
testing has to happen in parallel with the quantal development testing. 

> >
> > Question 4: shall we keep snapshots of the development release so that
> > we can "bisect" more easily and find when bugs were introduced?
> > This question also arose, and also is not tied to the other questions.
> > QA Team, is it feasible to keep a set of snap shots somewhere for this 
> > purpose?
> >
> 
> That would really be awesome, especially if the reporting QA tools get 
> better and we can run an older iso under a vm in a minute to just test 
> something quickly :)

Am trying to think about what makes sense to keep around, and across
which products, and for how long, but if we can secure the disk space
for this, agree it would be useful to the developers and testers.  

Preliminary thoughts are:  
 * Try to keep all image that we characterize (ie. run system tests on,
get boot speed measurements, etc.) available for a *useful* period.

However since we'll never have infinite disk space, ;) and they are less
useful over time, possibly some sort of age out strategy like:
 * keep at least the last month's worth of these characterized images
available (ideally it would be nice to have a set of weekly ones ;) )
 * keep at least a monthly snapshots from each of the 6 month
development period around for historical reference.
 * keep these for all images that will be in the release manifest.

Seem reasonable?  better ideas?

Kate


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Re: Releasing Alphas and Betas without "freezing"

[Didier Roche]

Le 20/06/2012 08:07, Rick Spencer a écrit :

I think this was a very productive discussion. We considered a lot of
possibilities from a lot of angles.

All told, I think there are four points under discussion. I'd like to
tease them out so we can move forward.

Question 1: shall we stop freezing the archive at milestones?
I believe there is not 100% consensus on this point, but enough
support to try it for Alpha 2, a la Theirry's suggestion.
QA Team/Foundations Team, do we/will we have the tools in place for Alpha 2?
I'm supportive of those as well. We really have to shake ourselves if we 
want to get in a state where we are clearly confident that no breakage 
happens anymore on the devel release, and this is a good step forward to 
help ourselves getting there quicker, even if we don't have the quality 
tool enough, we can clearly back that up with manual testing meanwhile.


This cycle, the next step for Unity and all related components is that 
each release is potentially the last one that is uploaded to ubuntu 
until the finale release. So, each version is a possible release 
candidate for Quantal. I do not want anymore to see half-backed unity 
features coming in. This is only possible now thanks to the huge quality 
increase we had last cycle and that we finally reached the feature level 
that we can expect from a UI. So, all extras should be precise, 
polished, reliable before getting into ubuntu.


So, removing the milestone freeze is completely aligned with that vision.


Question 2: shall we stop having milestones altogether?
This question arose in thread. I don't believe there is consensus for
doing this suddenly in 12.10.
Milestones are great for the "marketing part" and engage people testing 
a version because it's an alpha, or beta. However, our first alphas are 
not alphas the same way the other products are IMHO (the alphas are more 
for them "we implemented almost all new features we wanted, but it's not 
stabilized at all". It can bring some confusion maybe?


Question 3: shall we increase the rate of manual testing?
This question also arose in the thread. I think there is widespread
consensus that we should do this, and it is not actually related to
the other questions.
Community Team, is it feasible to increase the rate of full manual
testing runs to every 2 weeks or similar?
It was a hard job to keep regular contributors (reporting high quality 
results)  tight redoing serious testing every 2 weeks for unity 
releases, but I'm completely confident Nick can do this job. :)


Question 4: shall we keep snapshots of the development release so that
we can "bisect" more easily and find when bugs were introduced?
This question also arose, and also is not tied to the other questions.
QA Team, is it feasible to keep a set of snap shots somewhere for this purpose?



That would really be awesome, especially if the reporting QA tools get 
better and we can run an older iso under a vm in a minute to just test 
something quickly :)


Cheers,
Didier

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