Bill Nottingham said the following on 05/04/2009 01:01 PM Pacific Time:
== Preview Release ==
Known issues:
* PPC had a variety of issues o oversized o installed the wrong kernel o failed to install a bootloader * assorted anaconda partitioning issues
Discussed maybe using a separate config for PPC to keep it under size constraints, but it was decided to stay with one config.
== Deltarpm for F11 ==
Work needs done to either compose updates in a chroot (which has the F11 deltarpm support) or to backport it to the OS release used to generate updates. Seth Vidal is going to investigate which of these makes more sense. Given the timeframe, this is tight for F11 final. rawhide will continue to have deltas, as that's a separate compose process.
== F12 schedule ==
The schedule proposed by John Poelstra for Fedora 12 in https://fedorahosted.org/rel-eng/ticket/1271 was reviewed. The following changes were approved:
* the alpha milestone was removed entirely
Reading the IRC log am I correct in understanding that a more detailed summary is: "Remove all alpha release tasks from the schedule. There will be no alpha release because it does not provide enough value for the effort required to create it. There is little public testing value from it either." ?
1) What dates are we proposing for releasing "development snapshots" before the beta? We should put these on the schedule now.
2) The alpha release has always been a good first opportunity to start marketing our next release, sending out press releases, etc. Basically, drawing attention to the fact with the general public that a new release is in the works. Without an Alpha the first general press releases would be a month later. Is this okay?
The Alpha also naturally gets the release notes process and other parts of Fedora going (not development focused tasks) early which is a good thing. We'd be losing that too.
3) If we do away with Alpha as we know it, leaving two test releases, can we simply call them "Alpha" and "Beta"? I've always thought "Preview Release" was a funny name for a test release and I think the terms "Alpha" and "Beta" are more familiar to the general public.
Thanks, John
* due to conferences such as the Red Hat Summit, LinuxCon, and Linux Plumber's Conference, each milestone from 'Final freeze: development' (2009-09-15) should be shifted out one week.
This pushes GA from 2009-10-27 to 2009-11-03. The schedule will be presented for FESCo discussion at the 2009-05-08 meeting.
For more information on any of these, see the full transcript at: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/Meetings/2009-may-04
John Poelstra wrote:
- What dates are we proposing for releasing "development snapshots"
before the beta? We should put these on the schedule now.
Okay so this confused me a bit and I'm not so sure what this means. Does this mean that we eliminate the "alpha" entirely with the current "beta" becoming the new alpha and then the preview release being "beta" with development snapshots in the middle?
- The alpha release has always been a good first opportunity to start
marketing our next release, sending out press releases, etc. Basically, drawing attention to the fact with the general public that a new release is in the works. Without an Alpha the first general press releases would be a month later. Is this okay?
The idea of not tying it to an Alpha is fine, so long as we have some anchor point or date. Right now, the marketing stuff, with the new schedule does tie to a time period +/- the date is each part of the release. If there is something significant which is going to replace alpha we can use that or arbitrarily we can always use some other fixed point in the schedule as an anchor.
The Alpha also naturally gets the release notes process and other parts of Fedora going (not development focused tasks) early which is a good thing. We'd be losing that too.
Yup. We would need to define that kickoff by some other milestone. Now that I think about it, we could have a day we call Kickoff day or Countdown day when all this commences. I don't know if it will be as effective because I tend to think that the psychological milestone of an impending alpha release gets the ball rolling more quickly but thats just speculation.
- If we do away with Alpha as we know it, leaving two test releases,
can we simply call them "Alpha" and "Beta"? I've always thought "Preview Release" was a funny name for a test release and I think the terms "Alpha" and "Beta" are more familiar to the general public.
Again, so we switch the current "Beta" to "Alpha" and "Preview" to "Beta" right? It could still work from the marketing perspective as I stated above, we just need to make sure all the features that are being worked on are solidified a decent amount of time before whatever the first release in the cycle is so that we can have stuff available for then.
Jack
P.S. Was the art team informed about this because I would tend to think this would affect them as well?
John Poelstra (poelstra@redhat.com) said:
* the alpha milestone was removed entirely
Reading the IRC log am I correct in understanding that a more detailed summary is: "Remove all alpha release tasks from the schedule. There will be no alpha release because it does not provide enough value for the effort required to create it. There is little public testing value from it either." ?
- What dates are we proposing for releasing "development snapshots"
before the beta? We should put these on the schedule now.
Not yet determined.
(Skipping over marketing)
The Alpha also naturally gets the release notes process and other parts of Fedora going (not development focused tasks) early which is a good thing. We'd be losing that too.
Is there no way for these to be started without a milestone?
- If we do away with Alpha as we know it, leaving two test releases,
can we simply call them "Alpha" and "Beta"? I've always thought "Preview Release" was a funny name for a test release and I think the terms "Alpha" and "Beta" are more familiar to the general public.
Maybe 'beta 1' and 'beta 2'. Given that we're feature frozen, calling the first milestone 'alpha' seems odd; similarly, given the tree is frozen, calling the second one 'beta' doesn't quite fit.
Bill
marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org