[ecf-dev] ECF 3.10/Mars final daze

[Scott Lewis <slewis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Folks,

Sorry about the long note below, but we are coming up on the final days 
for ECF 3.10, and I wanted to communicate so that everyone will know the 
timing of things, what's going to happen, and what everyone's 
responsibilities are going to be.

1) When:  First, here's the Mars Simultaneous Release Plan and Schedule 
[1].  For all those not familiar with SR releases, all of these 
deadlines are considered both immutable and inviolable...i.e. they 
cannot and will not change.  If any project doesn't meet these deadlines 
it will be dropped (with prejudice).  For ECF core and filetransfer we 
are actually considered a -1 project, because these components are 
depended upon by Equinox/p2/Eclipse.  That means that we have to be done 
*earlier* than the platform (+0).   Just yesterday I provided an M7 
build of ECF core and filetransfer to the Platform.  On this comment [2] 
David clarifies our schedule.  Please see that comments [2].  Given 
those dates and David's comment about how hard it will be to get even 
trivial new builds in place for later release candidates, my inclination 
is to shoot for the RC2 May 20th as our *final* non-emergency build for 
ECF 3.10.0.  We can discuss this, if people have other thoughts, but 
realize that the later we go, the more we will have to fight with the 
Eclipse PMC to get new builds through to the Platform for Mars.

2) What:  First, starting next week (May 4) we will be on a feature 
freeze.  That means no more new things added to this release, and only 
bug fixes.   If you have something that you intend to get into this 
release and have not already, please get it in (with notifications to 
everyone here) by mid-day PT on Monday.  From that point on only bug 
fixes (no enhancements) may be added until after we've complete the Mars 
final builds.

3) Who:  I, Wim, and Harshana will be triggering release builds when we 
are ready, and coordinating our own schedules to do so when needed (e.g. 
May 18th).   When we do that and everything is complete, one of us will 
send a note to this pointing to the updated download page, New and 
Noteworthy, build qualifier, maven repo, and git tag associated with the 
release.  At that time one of us will also update the Mars meta-data, so 
that the Mars build will include the latest 3.10.0 release in the Mars 
SR repository.

4) Request for Help with Release/Install/Smoke Testing:    It's always a 
struggle to get sufficient testing, but this is particularly true for 
release/install and smoke testing.    What I mean by this is taking some 
appropriate version of Eclipse SDK (e.g.) the latest Mars (4.5) 
milestone build [3] and installing the latest build of ECF SDK repo [4] 
to make sure that everything installs, all the feature and plugin 
meta-data is correct, all the legal stuff (licenses, feature and plugins 
info, etc), all the source is available, etc.   This release includes 
some significant new Eclipse-based tooling for Remote Services If you 
have a few minutes, *please consider doing this* for some Eclipse 
package or configuration that you care about (e.g. Eclipse EE, Eclipse 
Java, WTP, Equinox server, Karaf, etc) and some set of ECF features (RS 
SDK/Eclipse SDK).   If you find any problem, please open a bug 
immediately here [5] and classify it as 'major'.

Thanks!  3.10.0/Mars is going to be a great ECF release!

Scott

[1] https://wiki.eclipse.org/Mars/Simultaneous_Release_Plan
[2] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=448916#c17
[3] http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/
[4] 
http://build.ecf-project.org/repo/C-HEAD-sdk.feature/lastSuccessful/archive/site.p2/
[5] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/enter_bug.cgi?product=ECF
[6] https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/enter_bug.cgi?product=ECF