[lttng-dev] Release strategy

[Christian Babeux]

Hi Matthew,

You certainly raise valid and interesting questions about our release
process. Here how I would categorize these questions:

1) Branching policy (when do we branch master? after the first release
candidate or after a final release?)

2) Release roadmap (when the next release is planned? what does it contain?)

3) Tentative release dates

For 1), the current way we are doing things is that during a release
candidate phase for a new stable release, a complete code freeze is in
effect e.g. only bug fixes will be merged until a stable release is
out. Normally, after multiple release candidates, master is branched
into a stable branch and the final official stable release is created
from that branch.

This could potentially cause troubles for contributors, e.g. posting a
set of patches and getting no response or waiting for merge if a
release candidate cycle is in effect. Any ideas/suggestions on how we
could improve this?

For 2), the release roadmap is available at [1]. The roadmap is kind
of a mess right now because bugs are assigned to older stable releases
giving the wrong impression that some stable releases are way late.

We would need a way to distinguish between bugs on already released
versions and features targeting future versions. Perhaps something
like [2-3] could be promising?

For 3), I would try to put tentative release dates on the roadmap on
Redmine or on a wiki article similar to [4]?

Another point that you did not mention is how we plan minor releases.
I think we will need to define a clear policy for minor releases
sooner than later because it is becoming quite painful to support
three codebases (modules, ust, tools) with three stable branches...
Perhaps in another thread?

On a more general note, I think clear communication is the key here.
I'm wondering if a monthly summary of the development activities on
LTTng and related projects could be interesting for the community?
Content example:

- What have we accomplished in the past month.
- What we are planning for the following month.
- Release status (next stable tentative release dates, planned minor
releases, etc.)
- Etc.

Any ideas/suggestions/constructive criticism on how we can improve our
release process are quite welcome!

Thanks,

Christian

[1] - http://bugs.lttng.org/projects/lttng/roadmap
[2] - http://www.redmine.org/plugins/advanced_roadmap
[3] - http://www.redmine.org/plugins/redmine_milestones
[4] - https://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/schedule/

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 3:52 PM, Matthew Khouzam
<matthew.khouzam at ericsson.com> wrote:
> Hello tracing rangers,
>
> I am a bit confused about the whole release cycle system.
>
> If you guys are in RC, I have a cool feature I was working on, where do
> I put it?
>
> When are releases coming out? is it planned or a surprise (I know it's
> planned)
>
> What are your hard / soft deadlines?
>
> Thanks,
> Matthew
>
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