Thought PMC members might be interested in
this planning conversation.
Btw, there was little to report from the
call this morning as only WTP and DTP were represented; I’m pursuing the
question of exact milestone dates separately.
From: eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
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On Behalf Of Kevin Haaland
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005
3:10 PM
To: eclipse.org-planning-council
Subject: RE: [eclipse.org-planning-council] Minutes from theAugust
meetingposted for your review
Added comments <KH >
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RE: [eclipse.org-planning-council]
Minutes from the August meetingposted for your
review
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Bjorn, some questions below. --tyler
Release Train
Kevin H described the Platform 3.2 schedule and discussed the modifications
that will be necessary for the train. There was a lot of discussion around the
train and what it will take to coordinate and release on the same date. The
overall summary is that the end game will be extended by an additional
milestone and thus API Freeze will be M5 and Feature Complete will be M6/RC0.
(Note that the milestone dates in 2006 are in flux and will probably be
adjusted to work around EclipseCon.) M2 is September 23rd, M3 is November
4th, and M4 is December 16th.
<tyler> It’s hard to commit to be on
the train and develop a plan to accommodate such without knowing when
we’re supposed to arrive at the final destination (i.e., Q2’06 GA
release date is too ambiguous to expect projects to align with). We are
in the midst of our 4.1 release (Nov 11) and will be finalizing our plan for
4.2 (end of June 2006) in Nov/Dec. Hopefully the Eclipse Platform project
will formalize an end of June 2006 GA date (and interim milestones) before then
so that we have something concrete against which to plan. </tyler>
<KH> Yes end of June 2006.
</KH>
.
Each project is assigned a "offset" number which is the number of
weeks their milestone dates are offset from the Platform dates. Thus BIRT,
being a +1 project, has milestone dates of M2 = Sep 30, M3 = Nov 11, M4 = Dec
23, etc. These offsets will (obviously) be reduced over the end-game until they
all reach zero.
<tyler> Above you indicate BIRT is +1
project, but below indicate +2. TPTP is actually a max(EMF,BIRT)+1
project since we will be dependent on EMF and BIRT finalizing their GAs before
we can. Hence, if BIRT is truly +2 as indicated below, TPTP would be
+3.</tyler>
<KH> Not sure if this is a comment
about the 3.2 development milestones or the shutdown sequence to GA. During
development I would prefer to have as short a cycle as possible between
milestone builds. I am hoping we can hold to a 2 week lag. See next section for
GA shutdown</KH>
<tyler> Also, you indicate that these
offsets will “be reduced over the end-game until they all reach
zero.” Our view is that the offset is determined by the length of
time required to execute a final test pass on the dependent GA releases.
E.g., for the mid-2005 releases, TPTP depended on EMF
GA which depended on EP GA.
After the EP GA, EMF needed a week for their final test pass to declare
GA. And thereafter, TPTP needed a week for final test pass to declare GA.
So, I’m not entirely clear about how the offsets reach zero.</tyler>
<KH>Having never done this
before in Eclipse there will definitely be surprises along the way. In the
planning discussion we did not get into the details of how we would coordinate
the final days in June. I like the idea of internally staging the final
shutdown cycle and it's important for you being at the end of the dependency
chain. Perhaps I am being a pessimist and assuming that there will be some
"stop ship" defects that each project will have to address in the
last days and weeks of June.
Using the Platform' team's conventions and
dates we will have our first release candidate (RC0) around April 1'st. (I
am using the April 1'st, May 15'th and June 30'th dates because the 6 week math
works out better and I like the idea of having a milestone on April Fools Day).
There would be matching release candidate builds from all of the other projects
that align using the staging schedule that we have been practicing during the
3.2 development cycle.
Between RC0 and GA we have a number of
additional release candidate builds which come out on 2 week then 1 week
cycles. Near the very end we address only stop ship defects and we build these
ones only as required. What I was thinking of for the coordinated release was
to aim to have concurrent release candidate builds starting on May 15'th
and we would all be doing our final testing and bug fixes together for
the last 6 weeks and there would be mechanisms for communicating an intent to
fix a defect before the code is released to give depend projects an ability to express
concerns if it would impact them.
</KH>
The projects participating in the release train, the milestone they expect to
start synchronizing, and the offset are as follows:
Note that participation in this initial train is limited - not everyone
who wants to join will be able to join this year. Assuming success, the process
will be opened to additional projects next year. Also note that if a project
falls behind the train schedule, it will be dropped - we will not slip the
train. A third note: any project that has not synchronized by M5 is off the
train for this year.
<tyler>
I’m still not clear about what projects get from “being on the
train” (vs. simply coordinating their releases with the Eclipse Platform,
i.e., arriving at the station at the same time on another train J). I thought there
was some discussion about packaging releases together at each milestone/release,
which would provide some benefit, but I’m not sure if that is really
envisioned and I didn’t see anything to that effect articulated in the
minutes. I know our intent is to align with the Eclipse Platform
milestones to best enable consumers of our project, but I’m not clear in
my understanding of the ability to “join the train” and the impact
of “falling off the train” (is that like falling off the wagon? J). </tyler>
<KH> My recollection was there was
agreement in the concept of having coordinated development milestones and
making it easier for our community to consume these builds. We identified a
range of dates that had the earliest possible date for staged milestone builds
at the beginning of November and the last possible date to start creating staged
milestones in Feb '06 (ie. if we can't get staged builds worked out by
Feb there is no chance for a coordinated June GA). Projects like WTP and
TPTP were not able to commit at the meeting to being able to do this on a 3.2
stream this fall as they already had release commitments. </KH>
Development
Process Guidelines
- The Guidelines should be clear that this is the only
document that you need to read - that this document
includes all the relevant details from the Development Process. Currently
the Guidelines are not comprehensive, but they should be because otherwise
it is too much hassle for the developers to figure out what to read.
<tyler>
Is this statement (“the only document that you need to read”) in
conflict with projects defining their respective more detailed development
process guidelines? In reality, Committers/Developers would need to read
the Eclipse Development Process Guidelines for the high-level and the Project
Development Process Guidelines for the project-specific (although Eclipse
conforming) guidelines. While I agree the Eclipse level guidelines could
benefit from some further clarity, I thought we agree that the projects would
continue to retain some latitude therein? </tyler>
From: eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:eclipse.org-planning-council-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Bjorn Freeman-Benson
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 1:15 AM
To: eclipse.org-planning-council@eclipse.org
Subject: [eclipse.org-planning-council]
Minutes from the August meetingposted for your review
Planning Council Members,
I put the minutes from the Boston
(August) Planning Council meeting at this URL:
http://www.eclipse.org/org/councils/20050823PCMinutes.html
Please send me any corrections. In the absence of replies, I will post
them publically (i.e., link them from the councils web page) on Tuesday the
20th.
--
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