Eclipse Test & Performance Tools Platform (TPTP) Project
Release 4.4 Planning Process

Last revised 21:00 EDT 16 March 2007

    Please send comments about this planning process to the tptp-pmc@eclipse.org PMC mailing list.

This document lays out the process and associated timeline for creating development plan for 4.4 release. It details various steps for soliciting and integrating input from community, contributors and committers  in selecting feature and API set to be developed. This is a working document and as such will be updated with additional information and refinement to the dates as they become available.

• Overview
• Planning Process
• Features
• Defects

Overview

The TPTP 4.4 release is targeted for general availability in June, 2007 and development is expected to start in February 2007. The main focus of this release is to reduce the defect backlog further and introduce a small number of enhancement that focus on improving the user experience. Particularly the agent controller code base will be depricated on all platforms and the newer code base that has been under development will be ported to an initial core set of platforms. Here is short (and necessarily incomplete) list of priorities:

• Quality: significant reduction of defect backlog
• Major upgrade of Java 2 SE profiler with support for JVMTI and Java 5 runtime environments
• GA Performance and monitoring tools support for ARM, JMX, and WSDM standards
• Reduced list of supported target platforms and accelerated introduction of new agent controller.

Planning Process

Input from Community (October/November 2006):

TPTP project welcomes input from the community on new features and enhancements to existing features. The preferred method for providing such input is by submitting enhancement requests in Bugzilla entries (if a similar item does not exist) or by voting for an existing enhancement request. Your input will help project leads and committers to prioritize for inclusion in TPTP 4.4.

Input from Contributors (November 2006):

Contributors (through their RG/PG representatives) are requested to provide information on availability of resources for 4.4 release cycle and propose via tptp-pmc mailing list a prioritized list of Bugzilla enhancements/defects roughly equal to the size of their resource commitments.

Input from Committers/PMC (December 2006):

Committers, project leads, and PMC can propose enhancements or improvements that are aligned with overall project goals and roadmap. For example, AG representative proposes via tptp-pmc mailing list a list of Bugzilla enhancements and defects appropriate for advancing the project in alignment with the TPTP and Eclipse Architecture Plans. During this time advocate committers will ensure complete description documents are in place.

Preparation of Draft Plan (January 2007)

Project Leads will communicate to lead committers preliminary guidance on resource availability for each component.

Lead Committers assimilate Community, Contributor, Architecture, Themes & Priorities inputs, and component maintenance needs (e.g., defect backlog age/size) to produce a prioritized list of candidate requirements (roughly balanced partitioning of P1/P2/P3 priorities).

Project Leads scrutinize Lead Committer proposals to ensure appropriate consideration of Community, Contributor, Architecture, and Themes & Priorities inputs, and balance between enhancements and maintenance. Project Leads will produce a consolidated project-wide prioritized candidate requirements.

Component Leads should drive analysis of candidate requirements, preparation of description documents, and review by AG. The document should include description of user visible functionality, architectural issues that span other components/projects, high-level implementation plan and effort estimates.

PMC/RG reviews proposed prioritization of requirements relative to community votes, contributor requests, themes & priorities, and project advancement; Outcome is PMC/RG approved candidate list of requirements.
Project Leads will consolidate component level draft plans into project-wide draft plan. PMC/PG will review the draft plan proposed by the Project Leads and suggest refinements to ensure resource feasibility, architectural alignment, requirements alignment across all TPTP projects. The expected outcome is approved TPTP 4.4 Draft Plan. (January 2007)

Community Review of 4.4 Draft Plan (February 2007)

The draft plan document will be published in January 2007 on TPTP website and announced to community via tptp-news, tptp-pmc, and tptp newsgroup for final review and feedback. This is an opportunity for gaining community acceptance as well as an opportunity for community to commit additional contributions to address requirements deferred due to resource gaps. 

Approval of Final Plan (March 2007):

Project leaders will drive analysis of the feedback and necessary changes to the draft plan. PMC/PG will review updated plan document and vote to approve the plan. The approved release plan will be published around March 15 on the TPTP website and announced to the community via tptp-news, tptp-pmc, and tptp newsgroup.

Tentative 4.4 Development Schedule

Features

Plan items targeted for this release represent the addition of new features or areas where existing features will be significantly reworked or enhanced. To see a comprehensive list of enhancements submitted for TPTP project, click the link below. Please vote for enhancements that you would like to see in this release.

List of Enhancement Requests

Defects

Quality improvement is a high priority for this release and will receive increased attention and resource allocation. This will include fixing outstanding defects reported in the Bugzilla, creation of additional unit level tests for Public API and infrastructure measuring API test coverage. To see a list of known defects, click the link below.

List of Defects