Minutes of the GNOME 2.0 Release Team Meeting - 2001/12/08

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

Minutes of the GNOME 2.0 Release Team Meeting - 2001/12/08
==========================================================

Present:

  John Fleck
  Karl Gaffney
  Jody Goldberg
  Jamin P. Gray
  Telsa Gwynne
  Gregory Leblanc (get well Greg!)
  Kjartan Maraas
  Michael Meeks
  Seth Nickell
  Sander Vesik
  Jeff Waugh (chair, minutes)
  
Missing:

  Maciej Stachowiak


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

  DONE: Find out what's going on with gnomecc
   => going to be 1.5
   => capplets from nautilus, gtkhtml shell if nautilus unavailable


Actions
=======

  ACTION: Jeff organised to meet with Bill H. on Monday to run up MUSTFIX
    desktop accessibility bugs
  
  ACTION: Announce Jody as third "Yes you can!" man
  
  ACTION: Seth to get good status report gnomecc

  ACTION: Seth to talk to Maciej, find out status of availability

  ACTION: Jeff to update schedule, Telsa to mail You Are Here

  ACTION: Telsa to personally mail hackers, get substitute maintainers if
   people are busy over Christmas

  ACTION: Seth, John, Jeff to meet and discuss gnome-utils
  
  DONE: Michael to send screenies to Jeff


Decisions & Discussions
=======================

* Adding another person (Jody?) to fast track review API changes (mmeeks)

  - maciej not very available, michael needs someone to confirm his changes
  - jody very happy to do it, also far more contactable now (receive only
    for a bit)
  - maciej very busy atm, seth to find out where he's at
  - seth happy to review changes if required


* Bugs MUSTFIX, bugsquad preparation (telsa)

  - mustfix guide + call for bugsquad coming out tonight
  - guage response from bug sifters and sorters, perhaps post to gnotices if
    not enough people
  - Michael: more ximian people coming online after evo release, helping
    with porting, attending to bugs, etc.


* Accessibility report from Bill H. (jdub)

  - libraries looking good
  - atk frozen as of today (begging-only mode)
  - gail (no api) looking good for gtk+, has limited support for gnome-canvas,
	gtkhtml2 and libzvt. no support for eel or gal widgets (not so high a
	priority)
  - at-spi getting thorough check up, due to freeze Jan 1; only cspi layer will
	be exported
  - very happy to see contributions from michael meeks on accessibility stuff
  - padraig working with gman and markmc on the panel, with likely success
  - markmc working on libzvt, looking easy to make accessible
  - nautilus a big grey area; no resources to see how big a task that would be,
	wants it to respect gtk+ themes and do keynav
  - testing needs to be done with high-contrast gtk+ theme, should be included
	with standard gtk+ themes
  
  MUSTFIX list:

  - Must ATKify / be accessible: panel, gnome-terminal, gnome-help, gedit,
    gnomecc
  - Attempt to ATKify, needs checking out: gnome-core
  - Keyboard navigation for desktop release modules (nautilus scary in this
    regard)

  From Michael:
  
  - Quite optimistic about accessibility features, it looks cool, will send
    screenies

  - Adding accessibility unlikely to destabilise modules, not a huge issue
    as it's fairly peripheral

  - Played sounds of computer talking :)

  From Discussion:

  - Keyboard navigation is the main priority

  - If we're saying 2.0 offers full accessibility, means we need to fix it;
    generally reduced to "must be fixed if broken enough to thwart further
    work"

  - Needs prioritisation; Jeff to bring this up with Bill at meeting on
    Monday

  - Need to take bite sized chunks, small targets for maintainers to target


* Visibility and activity of release team (jdub)

  - Need skills and insight of all members of the team, participants finding
    decision-making hard without the wide scope (technical and non-) of the
    team being on hand at the meetings

  - Like the A-Team, everyone has their tasks and skills that we need (!)

  - Discussion of meeting time, Seth and Maciej seem to be the only people
    requesting a new time.

  - Maciej somewhat MIA, Seth not so involved in meetings, everyone happy
    for contributions to be outside meeting time.


* Slipping schedule discussion (jdub)

  - Karl: GNOME 2.0 desktop, ported as per porting guide is the release
    target

  - Modules that need to make release for api and bugs/updates:

  - api: libgnomeui, libzvt, libgnomeprint(ui), libgnome-canvas, libglade,
    libbonobo, libgnome
  
  - bugs: linc, gtk+, glib

  - Platform beta release: Michael says end of next week as a practical date
    that we can achieve.

  - Desktop beta not happening in time; new desktop alpha cutoff date is the
    17th of December

  - Action items for Telsa and Jeff, re: updating and announcing schedule

  - Following release dates need to be redefined, first off the UI Freeze:

  - Features present in 1.4 fair game for porting and inclusion in 2.0
    regardless of UI freeze

  - Panel includes a number of major code changes and UI changes, but
    necessary for new platform

  - We should go with gnomecc 1.5 <= CONFIRMED!

  - UI freeze requires release team approval; porting only is a free license
    during this time: Due mid-January

  - End of January is the start of porting freeze: Beta release cut off 9th,
    released on 11th

  - Beta 2: Due 30th, release 1st

  - Trouble of maintainers not doing the porting work, this is a
    responsibility problem, need to communicate with people taking on de
    facto maintainership for GNOME 2.0 release

  - Need to push desktop release as a critical target, make this very
    apparent in new schedule announcement

- Jeff

-- 
   "Can we have a special TELSABUG category, and everything gets dropped    
                     to fix them first?" - Telsa Gwynne