[Libreoffice-qa] 3.5.0 QA ... from BHS 1 to BHS 2

[Cor Nouws]

Hi all,

Pedro wrote (10-01-12 18:57)
> Michael Meeks-2 wrote

>>> OTH more releases means more features but also more bugs. And because new
>>> bugs occur, old bugs are left behind.
>>
>> 	Oh ! so - this is an argument for doing a build every decade ;-)
>
> Not really. It's just an argument that if releases are too close, developers
> will only have time to fix blockers :)
> So not so critical bugs tend to accumulate. This could mean that it will
> loose quality as it goes along if it there are no major obstacles ;)

This has been part of our discussion in Paris.
  http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA/Improving_QA-Release-3.5
more specific

http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Liboconf2011_improving_qa_release_cycle-cornouws_Slides19-28.pdf
See #4 on slide 23, and slide 27 explaining that point.

That discussion (of course) carried no final conclusion - but the 
'agreement' (consent with Petr that it is a good idea) that the 
developers try to remember/summarise their experience with this, so that 
that can be part of an evaluation.

The idea/hope is, that faster/smarter fixing of bugs, leads to a shift 
in the time spending: less weeks on bug fixing and more on features.

However, there is inevitably a strong tangling with the QA work.
And - despite my optimistic nature and the many hours spent on both QA 
and getting that process at a higher level/notice - I have some serious 
concerns on how secure our over all process is in this regard.

This results in bugs that should have been handled/getting floated much 
earlier. Fix may be easy / ready in master / needed, but do not find 
their way to the bug fix releases.

Examples:
- 45068 Update from 3.4.4 on Win not possible without ...
     initial bug 2011-04-29 3.4.0 beta3,
     workaround published 2012-01-22
- 41054 Saving problem ods with new sheets
     initial report 2011-09-20
     fixed for 3.5 2012-01-10
     fixed for 3.4 still pending
- 39118 Charts do not update
     initial report 2011-07-10
     fixed for master/3.5 2011-12-13
     fixed for 3.4.6 2012-01-16

(pls don't ask me to provide more examples)

Because I know some people are quite sensitive for the impression of 
being accused personally: this is not the case. I do not accuse someone.
I just show where our process, our mutual activity, falls short.
Maybe our process at the moment is even better then 6 months ago (good 
change). Still, it's not good enough.

This is caused by the amount if bugs filed and the lack of time to 
handle those properly. So important issues do not always get the 
attention they deserve. It is not that bugs are not important enough, so 
that people ignore spending enough time on them.
Another reason: lack of triage / bundling of issues, which is both 
important for developers (fixing) ans users (simple how-to's for work 
around).
(Will do some kick off on that point later).

HTH,

-- 
  - Cor
  - http://nl.libreoffice.org