I think an exact release date is a must. "A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all." - Rita Mae Brown
On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 9:20 PM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On 09/28/2015 03:49 PM, Andrea Pescetti wrote: > > I've been very reluctant so far to provide an explicit release date > > for OpenOffice 4.1.2, because of some processes that were not under > > control yet. A generic "late 2015" or "last quarter 2015" would be > > all you got from me. This is still true, but I want it to be very > > clear that we are targeting October not December here. > > > > There are at least two good reasons for us to target October. > > > > On one side, patience is over. Users deserve some good news. We, the > > volunteers, need to feel useful and involved again. And, for a lot > > of different reasons, everyone (including people you would never > > imagine) would be happy to see an OpenOffice release in the very > > short term. So OpenOffice 4.1.2 must be released as soon as we are > > able to ship a release. > > > > On the other side, progress is remarkable lately. The last weeks > > marked a surge in activity that is unprecedented in months. This > > week is ApacheCon Europe time, so some actions (not decisions of > > course) will appear on the dev list after the fact, but I expect > > that we iron out the last Infra blockers. And QA will be reactivated > > as soon as possible, with some volunteers already lining up for > > receiving bugs to check. > > > > Here is a list of the current blockers: > > > > 1) Bugfixes: most of the patches for 4.1.2, especially the "risky" > > ones, have been merged; we still have a few left, as well as a few > > fixes still to apply to the already merged code; but this is mostly > > done. Besides the really wanted bugfixes, the rest will be left out > > of 4.1.2 if it delays our release. > > > > 2) SNAPSHOT binaries (actually SNAPSHOT will have to be moved due to > > a Mac build breaker in the CoinMP upgrade, now fixed) must be > > available; they will come; we will not use the buildbots since they > > are not usable for release builds due to wrong OS versions. > > > > 3) We need a place to upload dev builds to. That place is ready as > > of today at https://dist.apache.org/repos/dist/dev/openoffice/ ; but > > it will still need some Infra work (access and quota settings) which > > I expect to have ready soon. > > > > 4) QA. We need and want good QA on the snapshot, so that our first > > Release Candidate has high chances of approval; 4.1.2 won't be > > revolutionary after all, it is a normal release. But several people > > and processes have changed, and we need a team of people ready to > > check the builds. > > > > So a realistic schedule, which is to be used mostly as a guideline > > but which we should aim at respecting, is: > > > > - Now (28 Sept, but also earlier): The AOO410 branch is in review > > then commit mode. Don't commit to it unless you know what you are > > doing. We can't enforce a delay between committing to trunk and > > AOO410, but be careful. > > > > - This week (by 4 Oct): we get all we need from Infra in terms of > > access, disk space and information; last bugfixes get committed and > > from that point on we only fix... the bugfixes themselves. > > > > - By 7 Oct: we have a build available for testing (I do hope we have > > it earlier, a build from the current SNAPSHOT tag would work too!); > > we give QA and all volunteers a full week to test this snapshot. > > > > - By 14 Oct: we have feedback from QA, hopefully we manage to > > quickly apply fixes > > back to this...we are now at RC2. We seem to have a few release > blockers that have come in over the last few days, and actually > there was a change applied to issue 107619 -- > https://bz.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=107619 > > (this one was already a release blocker) > the might be nice to include. > > Is there any chance we will got to RC3 early next week and use that > for voting? > > > > > - By 18 Oct: the Release Candidate is available as both source and > > binaries. We vote. > > > > - By 25 Oct: Vote passes. Site is ready. Builds are copied. > > > > - Last week of October: release is announced. > > Ok, by this you mean like a few days AFTER Oct. 25th so we can test > the downloads from the web site? I know we've had a few bumps with > this in the past. > > > > > There is some flexibility in both directions (if we are able to > > upload test builds already tomorrow, why not? and conversely if we > > need an extra Release Candidate, let it be); but it is clear that if > > you have some time to spare for the project, it's better to allocate > > it in October. > > > > Regards, > > Andrea. > > > > All in all, things are going pretty well and I think you are a great > Release Manager! > > -- > -------------------------------------------- > MzK > > “The journey of a thousand miles begins > with a single step.” > --Lao Tzu > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@openoffice.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@openoffice.apache.org > >
