Minutes for Gnome 2 release team meeting 2002-08-21

[hobbit aloss ukuu org uk]

* Note that last week's minutes had the right date in the message
  body, but the wrong date in the subject line. Dear me. These have 
  the right one. I hope.


Minutes for Gnome 2 release team meeting 2002-08-21
===================================================

Present: full house! (Bingo!)

Frederic Crozat
Glynn Foster
Karl Gaffney
Jody Goldberg
Telsa Gwynne
Mikael Hallendal
Luis Villa
Jeff Waugh

Actions
-------

  DONE: Telsa to start pulling together lists of what we are missing and
  poking people to provide the info.

  DONE: Jeff to find GNOME hackers that have terminal test suites (for
  testing of vte and libzvt-i18n)
  => vttest is it. http://dickey.his.com/vttest/vttest.html
  We just need to start getting people to use it now :) 

  DONE: Luis to update known issues for 2.0.1

  DONE: Luis to provide links to bugfixes.


  PENDING: Frederic to write GEP for release-consistent version numbering
  changes, due week after next (he's on vacation)
  => Back off vacation, hasn't forgotten about it.

  PENDING: Sort out list of new stuff expected in 2.2.
  => Jeff to send request for this out, and we will split the
  results up among us by package and each monitor one small group.


  NEW: Karl to check dotplan and see what needs changing.

  NEW: Telsa to stuff her list of "missing" into bugzilla and
  solicit contributions.

  NEW: Telsa to check list of mailing lists and ensure someone from 
  release team is present on each of the projects who don't have 
  specific members on the release-team.

  NEW: Karl to make noises in next few weeks about performance
  and profiling. He said "three weeks", so remember for second
  meeting in September. 

  NEW: Mikael to send first API update to Jeff.

  NEW: Luis to send bug summary to Jeff

  NEW: Jeff to consolidate the above two and the You are here and
  send out. These three actions should become a routine so probably
  won't appear in the minutes again.

  NEW: Jeff to check in changes to dotplan. 

  NEW: Jeff to install analog or webalyser on the box hosting dotplan
  so we know what people are looking for/at/over.

  NEW: Jeff to create check-list of "things to do before major
  release" and maintain it so it's ready for 2.2.0. 

  NEW: Luis to draft list of what we might want to add to desktop 
  for 2.2. 

  NEW: Luis to draft standards of what we expect for a finished
  app that's going into 2.2 then post to g-h and d-d-l for discussion.

Decisions and discussions
-------------------------

  * Communication

  Just discovered that with the change in release team membership,
  we're not on all the relevant mailing lists. No-one on accessibilty
  lists for example. Bad release team, bad! Glynn, Jody and Luis to 
  head over to that list. Telsa to check for more lists we forgot. 

  * Performance

  The speed-up in Nautilus between Gnome 1.x and 2.0 was very noticeable,
  due to improvements in both Nautilus and the underlying libraries. 
  We think we should encourage this kind of thing for 2.2.x as much 
  as possible. Would a Sun box for people with no access to it help?
  Perhaps, although running X apps remotely can be a bit painful.
  Those companies who have access to profiling tools we don't have 
  floating around Gnome already should be encouraged to bugzilla 
  results of them: it all helps.

  * Planning ahead.
  
  We need a check-list for the next major release which we should
  make now, because we didn't really have a formal one for 2.0.0.
  Make it whilst we remember. Things like "have the mirrors been
  told of the definite final date" etc. 

  * How long will Gnome 2.0.x continue?

  If Gnome 2.2.0 is a howling success, likely that Gnome 2.0.x will
  stop releasing shortly after as people move to hacking on 2.2.x
  and little occurs on 2.0.x. If Gnome 2.2.0 is buggy, then 2.0.x
  will probably end up continuing longer.

  [Note: when I sent the minutes to release-team for agreement, this
  was clarified to "we don't anticipate 2.0.x to continue past 2.0.3".
  This is not what I understood at the meeting, but that's why you
  get them checked first :)]

  * Weekly updates

  As well as the weekly "You are here"s, we shall start weekly updates
  on other areas. API documentation is something we want to improve,
  so Mikael will list additions there. Luis will summarise bugs in
  that too. The "You are here"s will be incorporated into it. That
  way it's all in one mail. Luis thinks that when we release 2.0.x, 
  we must send info about 2.0.x+1 out so immediately that we should 
  look at sending it out _with_ 2.0.x. But if the weekly "you are
  here"s are successful, he agrees this can be dropped. 

  * Dotplan

  Jeff is hoping to check in changes to dotplan (widget, the web box,
  is currently having issues.) He will also install webaliser or analog
  on there to find out what pages people are looking at and for. A
  quick grep of the logs by hand revealed Malcolm Tredinnick's Gnome 2
  porting guide as the most popular dotplan offering. Congratulations 
  to Malcolm. 

  * Developer platform/Desktop/Fifth Toe.

  Carlos (chbm on IRC) says Balsa is ported to Gnome 2: where does it
  fit? (Yay, first Gnome 2 mailer to port.) Led to discussion on
  the lines to draw. Summary:
  - we don't anticipate adding anything to development platform.
  - it's possible we may want to add to desktop.
  - desktop is "what you expect on a desktop". 
  - different people expect different things...
  - fifth toe is "the fun stuff that isn't desktop".
  - line between the last pair is fine.
  - Balsa, rhythmbox, googliser are all now ported to Gnome 2.
  They have not necessarily gone through the stability testing
  (aka, betas and release candidates) and "how well does it conform 
  to HIG?" process. 
   
  Glynn and Kevin V are going to write a GEP for gnome-applets
  and gnome-utils anyway. 
  Luis will come up with a list of what we think we want to add to the 
  desktop for 2.2. 
  Luis also will write up suggested standards about "what we expect 
  for a final finished product" Then post to g-h and d-d-l for
  discussion.

  *  2.1 snapshots and version numbering.

  Re Frederic's action item:  we should think about version numbering now
  for this.
  
  * FTP site

  Jeff sent out suggestions for ftp site revamp. got two responses
  saying "this would be cool". Now what? 
  http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-hackers/2002-August/msg00069.html
    
Telsa