Meeting minutes (March 22nd)

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hey,

Here they are, at last: the minutes of our last meeting. Apologies for
the big delay, I've lost the minutes once and I wasn't eager to start
again from scratch :/

================

Attendance
==========

Present:
 Andre Klapper (andre)
 Frédéric Crozat (fcrozat)
 Karsten Bräckelmann (guenther)
 Lucas Rocha (lucasr)
 Olav Vitter (bkor)
 Vincent Untz (vuntz)

Missing:
 John Palmieri (J5)
 Kjartan Maraas (kmaraas)

Agenda
======

 + Follow-up on previous action items
 + Answer any questions Lucas might have
 + archive:// gvfs backend
 + Make assignments for 2.22.x and 2.23.x releases.
 + If Ross can join, discussion about a mobile release set.
 + Start getting volunteers for the 2.24 release notes (or how to make
   release notes actually happen on time)
 + Short freeze for documentation? (see the mail I sent a few days ago
   to gnome-i18n, gnome-doc-list)

ACTIONS
=======

Olav:
 + rewrite the release scripts in python

Vincent:
 + announce the release team membership changes
 + announce the gvfs archive backend decision
   => done/dropped: not officially announced, but it was discussed and
      Alex is on leave now
 + get a BoF/mini-hackfest at GUADEC to start writing the release notes
   => done, BoF confirmed
 + discuss the short string freeze for documentation with translatiors
   and documentation people

Someone:
 + someone to fix the release schedule ical
   => done (by Lucas, iirc)

Release Team Membership
=======================

Elijah left the release team with the 2.22.0 release and is now replaced
by Lucas Rocha. We are all sad to see Elijah leaving since he has done
so much, and on the other hand also excited to have Lucas among us. We
of course have to assign all the boring tasks to him for a few months
;-)

gvfs archive backend
====================

There is a new archive:// backend in svn that can be used to view
archive files (tar, zip, iso, etc.). To be usable by users, though, it
needs a small new desktop file so that this backend gets associated with
the right MIME types. Some gvfs hackers would like to enable this
feature in 2.22.

There were various comments:
 + this is a nice feature, that makes many people happy (no need for
   file-roller)
 + if done, this wouldn't be the default handler for archives files
   (would still be file-roller), so people would have to proactively
   choose it.
 + strictly speaking, this is a feature freeze break.
 + this new backend was added in svn on the day of the 2.22.0 release,
   so it didn't see a lot of testing
 + the new desktop file needs a few new strings, which means string
   freeze break. The cycle has already been hard for translators,
   though.
 + this is read-only, so it's not possible to save files that were
   opened. For a lot of people, this is enough, but it can be confusing.
 + only gvfs aware applications can open files from there, since it's an
   URI scheme that only gvfs supports (note from way later: it's
   possible to patch gio to send the FUSE path instead of the URI to
   make this work)
 + it creates an icon on the desktop with the same name and same icon,
   which is confusing (especially if your archive was on the desktop in
   the first place)
 + Alex has enabled this in Fedora (note from way later: is it still the
   case?)
 + Sebastien has disabled this in Ubuntu after hitting a few bugs (the
   most important one being that non-gvfs aware applications can't use
   it)
 + Frédéric won't enable it in Mandriva.

After the long discussion, we decided we won't add the new desktop file,
and people wanting to play with it will have to manually create a
desktop file (or copy it from somewhere else) during 2.22.

Assignments for 2.22/2.23
=========================

Lucas will do 2.23.3, Frédéric will do 2.23.4 and Vincent will handle
everything else for now (unless volunteers step up).

 2.22.1, April 9:  Vincent
 2.23.1, April 23: Vincent
 2.23.2, May 14:   Vincent
 2.22.2, May 28:   Vincent
 2.23.3, June 4:   Lucas
 2.23.4, June 18:  Frédéric
 2.22.3: July 2:   Vincent
 2.23.5: July 23:  Vincent

The next release assignments will be decided in the next meeting.

The ical also needs to be updated -- Lucas had issues when trying to do so.

Discussion about mobile release set
===================================

Ross Burton couldn't join, but some items were briefly raised:
 + how to handle things that are non-matching? Like different d-bus
   versions
 + the release scripts probably need some love/rewrite to handle this.
   Olav already has plans to rewrite them in python.

Gettings volunteers for the 2.24 release notes
==============================================

 + this is an issue that comes back every cycle, the main reason being
   that it's difficult to find writers
 + maintainers could probably do a better job at providing in time
   detailed information about the important changes of their modules
 + GUADEC is happening at the right moment to start working on the
   release notes, so a BoF could be organized there
 + it might also be interesting to discuss more generally the process of
   getting release notes done and also the roadmap during this BoF. Lots
   to discuss, though, so maybe two BoF?
 + as a reminder, organization of the release notes is on
   marketing-list, so we should redirect volunteers there

Short string freeze for documentation
=====================================

 + the idea is to freeze the documentation strings the week-end before
   releases, on Friday evening. This won't give enough time for
   translators to translate the whole documentation, but it will help
   teams which have already most of the documentation translated to
   update the strings that have been changed at the last moment. This
   would be done for all stable releases (.0, .1, .2, .3). For
   documentation people, it means they can break the freeze between .0
   and .1, for example.
 + it's hard to have a longer freeze (like one week before the release)
   because documentation people are also overwhelmed and really need to
   do changes at the very last moment
 + clearly a case that is hard, but we can try an experiment for 2.24.0
   and see how it works

Next meeting
============
The next meeting will be in July after GUADEC, although there might be
other meetings before...

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas pressés.