Re: [cross-project-issues-dev] Re: [eclipse.org-planning-council] Bjorn

[Oisin Hurley <ohurley@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,
This is the more substantial response that was promised yesterday.

I've picked what I see as the two major concerns from the email trail:

1. STP - can it deliver on the technical requirements for ganymede?
2. STP - can we trust it not to screw everyone else (and the release)  
up?

I think that the answer to 1) is yes - the STP artifacts are signed,  
packed
and the site is digested as per requirements.  We've sailed very close  
to the
edge with this, but RC4 has all it needs, I believe.  We also have a  
process
for producing the build artifacts - it involves manual steps, but as  
you all know
once the process is described, the next step is automation. It's the  
repeatability
that counts. You can see our simple build process described at [0].

The issue of 2) is a little more complex because it's a trust thing,  
and it's
the rest of you project leads that need to make the decision on that.  
I can only
make my case here to you all.

I think we've been responsive in quashing bugs of the 'play well with  
others'  ilk,
and for fixing up bad builds, correcting nearly all of them in less  
than half a day.  One thing that I feel was an issue here is that we  
have no build watchers in the North American time zones, so our  
responsiveness had certain limitations. Introduction of the 'build it'  
button for Ganymede cruise control has helped this (although the  
cruise site is not always available) but before that there would have  
been a visible lag time.

The project's major issue for this year has been staffing, especially  
around
the build work.  What if Nick Boldt suddenly won the lottery and lit  
out for
a world cruise of indeterminate length? We'd all be the poorer, yet we  
would
muddle through, because of his excellent documentation of the process.  
Now what
would happen if he hadn't documented thing quite so well? This was the  
position in which we found ourselves  in May of this year.

Silence is the enemy of trust, and it has been pointed out to me (quite
correctly) that my communications within the community of project leads
at Eclipse has been less than exemplary.  Ineffective communication,  
coupled
with build tardiness as I tried to cram how the build is meant to work,
has popped up warning flags.  I would feel the same way if I were  
observing
from the community as a whole.

So, what's the plan to address these issues as we carry on?

On builds, post-ganymede, I'll be devolving the build responsibilities  
to sub
project teams.  It will be like a little Ganymatic, where these teams  
will submit
features for an overall STP release heartbeat.  This means less work  
for me and
will enable more compliance on the ship dates.  We'll be fully  
automatic, and won't
have to suffer some of the manual process. All this work will be done  
in the open,
with a bugzilla, for review or scrutiny as required.

On the trust factor, I believe that increasing the quality and  
timeliness of my
communications to this group will help immensely. I'm more than  
willing to take
guidance in this regard.

I'm sure STP can take part in Ganymede without mucking it up for  
everyone. The
technical requirements are in place, there is a process there for  
making the build
and immediate feedback from the Ganymatic that can be responded to.

We have a 3 or 4 consumer organizations that are eagerly awaiting the  
release to
use in their next product cycle and I know Ian has been receiving good  
numbers of
press enquiries about STP during this release. It would be good for  
those
organizations and for the press to have STP in there. It's close, I  
know, but I'm
sure STP can do it.

  best regards
    Oisin

[0] http://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/stp/build/trunk/how-to-build.txt

p.s. My thanks to all from the community who have helped out in getting
the last technical elements sorted: Thomas, David, Nick, Martin, Ed.


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