[Mesa-dev] [RFC] Mesa 17.3.x release problems and process improvements

[Emil Velikov]

Hi Ken, all,

As you may know, a few Mesa 17.3.x releases went out with some nasty
bugs.

Some were due to lack of basic coverage, while others required fairly
complex test setups. Ones that are currently not available or feasible
in an automated manner.

Additionally, with the increased pace of development some nominated
patches require non-trivial changes or depend on others patches that
are not nominated.

While nearly all of the non-trivial nominations receive a reply from a
release manager, it's possible to miss some or their respective reply.

Furthermore the pre-release announcement email is, albeit concise,
still fairly long. Thus making it easy to miss specific details.


So while others explore ways of improving the testing, let me propose
a few ideas for improving the actual releasing process.


 - Making the current state always visible - have a web page, git
   branch and other ways for people to see which patches are picked,
   require backports, etc.

It will allow an interactive view and testing from anyone at any point
in time. To implement that we could explore Patchwork or Gitlab.


 - Per team maintainer - each team has person (a few people) to check,
   coordinate and remind people for high priority bugs and backports.

This will help us in two ways: a) some bugs have more weight than
externally visible, b) the informal poke while sharing a cup of coffee
is more welcoming than reminders over email/IRC.


A few other ideas that were also came to mind:

 - Round robin - where me/Igalia team will check for outstanding
   patches, backports, etc.

 - Have two distinct emails - an announcement and a second RFC that
   lists the rejected patches and ones with outstanding backports


Obviously, the above suggestions are with my release manager hat on.

So any corrections, alternative suggestions and general nods of
approval would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks
Emil