Re: Wanted by the release team

["Elijah Newren" <newren gmail com>]

On 8/6/06, Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net> wrote:
> so i think it is up to you to decide - if you still think that i am the
> right person that fits into the vacancy and that i would be enriching to
> the release team, then i am willing to take this responsibility, to
> learn some stuff that's new to me, and to do my very best by working in
> a team with you, to make gnome even better and more successful.

I think you'll be great for the job.  I believe our single biggest
flaw right now is that we're doing a horrible job with showstopper
tracking and nagging.  I think you'd be perfect for helping us fix
that.

I understand your apprehension -- I felt the same when joining, and
pretty much just lurked for the first couple months before getting
more involved.  However, I think you overestimate the requirements for
being on the release team; you should be just fine learning as you go.
Since r-t tends to be really busy just before a .0 release and very
relaxed for a while after one, now is probably the perfect time for
you to join.  Other than what you can do now for showstopper nagging,
I'd say you should just feel free to watch and learn up to the 2.16.0
release.

Longer term, to ease your apprehension, just let me point out that r-t
is not and cannot be the experts of technical details in all areas.
Well...except for Federico.  ;-)  Module owners are the experts of
details for their modules.  Thus, while we ultimately have jobs like
freeze break approvals and determing which new modules to add to the
next big release, we are usually forced to look at it from a distance
rather than at the specific technical details.  Granted, it doesn't
hurt to apply any technical ability and knowledge you have to a given
problem, but it just can't be expected of the r-t in general.  For
freeze break approvals, we're just making sure that maintainers have
weighed the trade-offs, and done so in a way that weighs things
appropriately in the larger scheme of things -- and we usually do so
based more off their explanation of the tradeoffs (or lack thereof)
than off reading patches.  For new module decisions, we are really
just trying to determine community consensus.  As to defining new
functionality for modules or new API, that's left to the maintainers.

The only area that I think might be problematic for you is in making
releases; but that area is a problem for everyone -- no one joins
automatically knowing the methods and structure of our tarball
releases (partially because it's still in flux; there's definitely
room for improvement).  Because of that, it's something we have been
making sure to walk others through for the first time or two  We'll
probably want you to make a release or maybe two during the 2.17
cycle, but that's a ways off and you should have plenty of time to
practice building Gnome in general before then.

Does that help clarify things?

Cheers,
Elijah