[Libreoffice-qa] Lifecycle of builds?

[Robinson Tryon]

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 10:33 AM, Petr Mladek <pmladek at suse.cz> wrote:
> I see that you both use a bit different logic, so we need to decide how
> we count the 6 and 9 months. I understand it the following way:
>
>         + the release is defined by the minor version release, e.g. 3.6
>           or 4.0
>         + regular and extra bugfix releases are provided during the
>           life time
>         + the life starts with the .0 release
>         + the life ends when we are not willing to provide any new
>           bugfix release

So would we provide an EOL date for each point release in a series, or
just a single EOL date for all of our 3.6.x released builds?

Granularity is nice, but one EOL for the entire release series might
be easier to manage. I'd often thought of each 3.5.x build as a
separate release, but as you describe it, it's mostly just a
maintenance schedule.

> I think that it would be fair to make it live at least 4 weeks after the
> last scheduled bugfix release. By other words, we should provide extra
> bugfix release if we add serious regression into the last bugfix
> release.

4 weeks of support for a regular build seems pretty short, but when
you describe it as a "bugfix release," it makes a lot more sense in my
mind. Perhaps we could add some language on the ReleasePlan page to
help telegraph the impending end of the series?

Maybe in the tables of releases:

3.6.0
...
3.6.6 bugfix
3.6.7 bugfix

Is there a better/shorter label we could apply there?

> If we do it this way, the numbers would look like:
>
>         version     start           end            length
>
>         + 3.6       Aug 8, 2012     Aug 14, 2013   12 months
>         + 4.0       Feb 6, 2013     Nov 20, 2013   9 months
>         + 4.1       Jul 24, 2013    May 28, 2013   9 months
>
> It is basically what Michael mentioned because the .0 release is for
> early adopters. The release is stable around .3 bugfix relase which is 3
> months after the .0 release.

Ah, okay, so perhaps a new column in the table:

3.6.0 - early adopters
3.6.1 - (or maybe 'unstable'? marketing would hate that..)
3.6.2 - (Better: leave it empty until we can mark it 'stable' :-)
3.6.3 - stable
...
3.6.6 - bugfix
3.6.7 - bugfix

Then if we had to add an extra bugfix, we could do something like
3.6.8 - special bugfix

Unlike the rest of the information in the table, the labels in this
column could be added at each new release, especially as we don't know
at the outset which point release we'll feel confident to mark as
'stable'.

>
> I wonder if there is a list of certified developers somewhere. I have
> found only the description at
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/TDFCertification

https://www.documentfoundation.org/certification/developers/

I would suggest that you link to some internal page on the wiki (say
TDF/certification), as it's likely that other pages will want to
mention the certification program or the currently-certified
developers.

--R