GNOME 1.4 Rel Eng Minutes (Feb 5, 2001)

[Dan Mueth <dan eazel com>]

  Minutes for the GNOME 1.4 Release Committee meeting Feb 5, 2001
  ----------------------------------------------------------------

Present:
--------
  Maciej Stachowiak (co-coordinator of 1.4, chair)
  Jacob Berkman     (co-coordinator of 1.4)
  Ian Peters        (co-coordinator of "extra apps")
  Dan Mueth         (documentation, minutes)
  Karl Gaffney      (coordinator of QA)
  Kjartan Maraas    (translations)
  Greg Corrin       (PR)
  Jamin Gray        (co-coordinator of "extra apps")

Absent:
-------


Decisions:
----------
  * We should have binary packages for test releases
  * Will follow Karl's QA proposal with only minor changes


Work Done:
----------
  ACTION: Maciej will send Greg and Leslie a list of changes and features
          in GNOME 1.4
          -> Not done yet.
  ACTION: Greg and Leslie will create draft press release and send it to
          the Board of Directors and GNOME 1.4 Rel Eng Team
          -> Not done yet.
  ACTION: Jacob will branch gnome-core HEAD into gnome-core-1-4 and
          release
          -> Not done yet.
  ACTION: Karl will propose a QA process
          -> Done.
  ACTION: Maciej will get in touch with Miguel to coordinate possible
          bonobo branching
          -> Done.  No arrangements for branching have been possible.

Work in Progress/To Be Done:
----------------------------
  ACTION: Maciej will send Greg and Leslie a list of changes and features
          in GNOME 1.4
  ACTION: Leslie and Greg to finish/circulate GNOME 1.4 outline
  ACTION: Greg and Leslie to send GNOME 1.4 PR plan to group by Friday
  ACTION: Greg and Leslie will create draft press release and send it to
          the Board of Directors and GNOME 1.4 Rel Eng Team
  ACTION: Greg to get bios from advisory board members
  ACTION: Jacob to release a 1.4 version of gnome-core (around 12th)
  ACTION: Dan to post release schedule to gnome-i18n
  ACTION: Dan to send QA contact for docs to Karl
  ACTION: Jacob to discuss partial-freezing of bonobo with Miguel and
          report to this committee
  ACTION: Everybody to send any feedback on QA process to Karl/list so
          we can finalize it


Agenda Items Left For Next Meeting:
-----------------------------------
Release staging - how to get it to the mirrors before it gets to
  slashdot
GNOME 1.4.x releases.
Extra apps packages update

Agenda:
-------
LWE:
  * Went very well
  * Leslie arranged interview with Miguel, Tim Neys, Bart, and others from
    the show

PR:
  * Leslie and Greg are working on PR outline for GNOME 1.4
  * Would like to release the advisory board list before GNOME 1.4
  * Greg will get bios from advisory board members
  * Greg will give us a summary of the GNOME 1.4 PR plan on Friday

QA/Testing:
  * Karl proposed a very good QA process
  * Only minor modifications will be made
  * QA for Nautilus: Victor Lecha <victor eazel com>
  * QA for docs: Dan will send
  * QA for Sawfish: ask John Harper <jsh eazel com>
  * QA for Ximian: Mark Gordon <mtgordon ximian com>
  * Telsa may help with QA
  * Kjartan will help with QA
  * Contact Eli Goldberg <eli eazel com> to help coordinate volunteers

Test packages:
  * We should have binary packages available for testing
  * Eazel may be able to provide test packages for some distributions
  * Ximian may provide test packages
  * We should test using unpatched test builds

Bonobo:
  * No freeze date has been agreed upon
  * The maintainers don't want to set a freeze date
  * Suggested compromise: divide bonobo into a stable part and unstable
    part
  * Unstable part is optional: #define BONOBO_USE_UNSTABLE
  * Stable part is part of GNOME 1.x platform ie. will be 100% source and
    binary compatible for lifetime of GNOME 1.x platform
  * Jacob will propose this solution to Miguel and then email us with
    the decision

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix A: GNOME 1.4 Release Schedule


GNOME 1.4 Schedule
------------------
1/29  Nautilus PR3 release
2/5   Library freeze date - create 1.4 branches, bug fix only mode
2/10  Freeze date for everything else - bug fix only mode, branch as
needed
2/10  Drop dead date for packages - any proposed new packages which are
      not ready will be dropped)
2/15  Package due date for GNOME 1.4 Beta 1 (maintainers must upload
                                             packages by this date)
2/17  GNOME 1.4 Beta 1 (based on Nautilus PR3)
2/18 - 2/25  Beta 1 Test Cycle
2/23  Nautilus 1.0 freeze
2/26  Nautilus release candidate tarballs released (0.9 or 0.99 or
                                     something - done barring final Eazel
                                     and community QA)
2/26  GNOME 1.4 Beta 2 package due date
2/28  GNOME 1.4 Beta 2 (based on Nautilus release candidate)
2/28 - 3/7   Beta 2 Test Cycle
3/5   Nautilus 1.0 release
3/6   GNOME 1.4 beta 3 package due date
3/8   GNOME 1.4 Beta 3 (based on Nautilus 1.0)
3/8   Hard freeze except for docs and translations - code changes may
      only go in for critical bugs as reviewed by Release Team (or the
      GNOME Foundation board for hard cases).
3/9 - 3/17   Beta 3 Test Cycle
3/16  GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1 package due date
3/18  GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1
3/18  Hard freeze for everything, including docs and translations -
      code changes may only go in for critical bugs as reviewed by
      Release Team and GNOME Foundation board.
3/19 - 3/26  Release Candidate 1 Test Cycle
3/25  GNOME 1.4 Final package due date - but no changes expected from RC1
3/27  GNOME 1.4 Final


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix B: QA Overview (Karl)

Outline:
	o Test Schedule
	o Quality Criteria
	o Processes
	o Testing (who/what/where)
	o Committed resources

	
Test Schedule
-------------

This is pretty straight forward and sync's in with the already agreed
Gnome 1.4 build schedule.

Here's the proposed schedule:

[2/17  GNOME 1.4 Beta 1, based on Nautilus PR3]

2/18 - 2/25  Beta 1 Test Cycle


[2/28  GNOME 1.4 Beta 2, based on Nautilus release candidate]

2/28 - 3/7   Beta 2 Test Cycle


[3/8   GNOME 1.4 Beta 3, based on Nautilus 1.0]

3/9 - 3/17   Beta 3 Test Cycle

 
[3/18  GNOME 1.4 Release Candidate 1]

3/19 - 3/26  Release Candidate 1 Test Cycle

 
[3/27  GNOME 1.4 Final]

3/28 - 4/4   Release Candidate 2 Test Cycle



Quality Criteria
----------------

What criteria will be used to determine that Gnome 1.4 is of sufficient
quality for general release to the community. Areas (metrics) to
consider are:-

   	o Bug counts
   	o Bug priorities
   	o Features complete/incomplete
   	o Product performance
   	
Need to decide on the following:
   	
	Who has final say whether/when Gnome 1.4 is released?
	Do veto's exist?
   	What defects will be allowed into Gnome 1.4 at release time?
   	

Process
-------

Given the disparate nature of those who will be involved in QA, how do
we best coordinate our efforts to ensure maximum test coverage and no
duplication. I'd like to have individual contacts in each of the core
Gnome areas, who will take responsibility and provide testing/QA status
for that area of responsibility. I'd envisage the following areas
(these are very much up for discussion/review):-

	Core Gnome apps
	Extra Gnome apps
	Nautilus
	Sawfish
	Gtk (and associated libraries)
	
I'd propose setting up the following means of communication:

	o Gnome 1.4 test alias (gnome-1 4-test-team gnome org)
	o Weekly IRC meeting to review test issues and quality criteria
	o Quality metrics (bug lists).
	
   
Testing
-------

The first question is what do we currently have in the way of test
suites, documents and/or processes. I polled a few people approx. 6
months ago and came to the conclusion that there wasn't that much
available. If this situation has changes or I missed key areas please
let me know.

I'd like to outline what Sun is planning for Gnome 1.4 testing, both in
terms of it's involvement in the community release of Gnome 1.4 and with
Sun's subsequent Solaris release of Gnome 1.4

Pending the final release of Gnome 1.4 from Gnome.org, Sun will be
releasing a Gnome 1.4 for Solaris (Sparc and Intel). Sun will be
committing 4 test engineers to this project. As well as testing our
internal Solaris builds of Gnome 1.4 these engineers will execute the
same tests on Gnome community builds of Gnome 1.4 as outlined in the
Gnome 1.4 build schedule. The current test coverage is outlined at the
end of this mail. These test assertions will be made available to the
community within about a week.


Test Coverage
-------------

We've in the process of writing a set of manual test assertions that
cover the following Gnome components. The number of test assertions are
in parenthesis (). We plan to continually add to this to cover all 
components that make up the core Gnome 1.4 packages. Currently, the 
following tests exist.

Nautilus:
	
Sanity test suite (36)
Functionality test suite (300)
( 211 positive test assertions and 89 negative assertions)
Regression test suite (40)

Evolution:
	
Functional test suite (355)
	
Core Gnome components:
	
Functional test suite broken down as follows:

bugbuddy (50)	 	gnome control center (9)    x-chat (26)
sound recorder (10)	system monitor (45)	    system log monitor (9)
system information (4)	user listing (9)	    gnome terminal (8)
eye of gnome (9)	icon editor (15)	    simple calculator (28)
character map (8)	color selector (14)	    font selector (6)
search tool (19)	mini commander applet (10)  deskguide applet (8)
printer applet (7)	tasklist applet (11)	    char  picker applet (7)
gnotes applet (10)	i18n keyboard applet (5)    hex editor (23)