Minutes of the GNOME 2.0 Release Team Meeting - 2002/01/19

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

  Special to this episode of the release team minutes is Luis Villa's guest
  appearance. Following in the footsteps of Heather Locklear on Melrose
  Place, Luis will be our regular special guest star, as we've invited him
  to join the release team to help with bugs and QA! Hooray!

Minutes of the GNOME 2.0 Release Team Meeting - 2002/01/19
==========================================================

Present:

  John Fleck
  Karl Gaffney
  Jamin Gray
  Jody Goldberg
  Telsa Gwynne
  Greg Leblanc
  Michael Meeks
  Sander Vesik
  Luis Villa (guest star!)
  Jeff Waugh (minutes, chair)

Missing:

  Kjartan Maraas
  Seth Nickell

Regrets:

  Maciej Stachowiak


Previous Actions
================

  DONE: Chasing status from maintainers, encouraging porting; Telsa, Jody, Karl.
   => sent mail to various office maintainers

  DONE: John + Greg to work on documentation building within cvs modules.
   => under control

  DONE: Sander to tackle Sawfish.
   => ongoing, but the work has begun

  DONE: Jeff to post to g2rt, then Tim, Leslie and Foundation re:
    marketing position on Fifth Toe.

  DONE: Telsa to ensure all packages being released have components in
    bugzilla and appropriate version numbers. 

  DONE: Jeff to update dotplan with UI date and send another "You are here".
   => done UI update, sending you are here tonight
  
  PENDING: Jeff to link documentation on dotplan.
  
  PENDING: Jeff to add more information to the panel warning dialogue.

  PENDING: Telsa to post MUSTFIX etc explanations to help people understand
    bugzilla.
   => Louie has recommended milestones, posted long email to g2rt about it.
  
  PENDING: Telsa to nag ftp://ftp.linux.org.uk maintainers about gnome
    mirroring.
   => doing now


New Actions
===========

ACTION: Post list of late packages to g2rt. (sander)

ACTION: Post encouraging debrief report on alpha release. (jdub)

ACTION: Jeff to post to g2rt regarding ftp restructure. (jdub)


Decisions and discussions
=========================

* Telsa proposes to add Luis to release team

  - Everyone agrees, but absolutely disagrees to let Telsa go

* Desktop Alpha release 'debrief' and soap-boxing; what we did right, what
  we did wrong, what we can learn / should do for the next one.

  - we have two deadlines to encourage maintainers to keep: package due and
    release
  - produce report, how release went?
  - nominate helpers if maintainers aren't available
  - sander doesn't feel comfortable doing post-mortem
  - write encouraging report, as this was much better than the library
    release
  - now that we've made a desktop release, we can always ship older versions
    if necessary for upcoming releases
  - encourage maintainers to release regardless of pending betas, etc., but
    not be too 'noisy' :)
  - discussion about releasing when large changes such as api, binary
    incompatible changes, new features or big bugfixes come in
  - should only happen after a bit of cvs testing

* Missing packages in releases, verifying release from releng module.

  - Jeff has script to check packages, should have been using it. :|

* Improving tarball/tag showup so binary package builders actually have a
  chance.

  - binary package builders could just use cvs if releases are tagged
  - require people to tag releases in standard fashion; version in changelog
    too -> big release requirement
  - this is not an onerous requirement, fairly straight-forward engineering
    practice

* FTP location for binary packages, changes. (jdub)

  - will post to g2rt regarding this

* FAQ notes release; items for inclusion.

  - everyone to post to g2rt with items

* Requesting ChangeLogs against 1.4 packages.

  - encourage maintainers to write changelogs like marc's awesome list
  - add to havoc's new features list
  - work on canonical list, as docs people want one too

* Priority tasks / issues for beta release.

  - docs / scrollkeeper issues on gnome-docs-list
  - need for xml catalogue resolution
  - no solution yet, docs people working on it
  - nautilus, sawfish (very much so)
  - nice if sawfish would build out of cvs, good start
  - telsa testing window managers to make sure things work ;)

* More mirrors, which we forgot this time around. Greg and Jason have the
  Australian mirrors sorted, how to push even more.

  - ftp.linux.org.uk
  - australian mirror online with syncing!
  - push mirroring is 'nice' but not required, jason wished more people did
    it the same way :D (probably good for convincing other mirror admins)
  - ftp.mirror.ac.uk great mirror for uk people

* QA and bug handling 
* Special Guest Star: Luis "Bug-stompin'" Villa!

  - keywords selected instead of milestones before, luis flexible
  - need to settle on a scheme soon though, to get started on triage
  - luis putting in the man-hours to get it going
  - no responses to Karl's 2.0 testing gnotices post
  - weekly/daily reporting emails can be sent for good status information
  - todo list can be moved over to bugzilla
  - reporting can be very flexible, luis can do it ;)
  - gtk people use it a lot, may not want to participate in this setup
  - luis will post to gnome-hackers
  - luis will join the release team! hurrah!

- Jeff

-- 
             make: *** No rule to make target `whoopee'.  Stop.