[Pkg-xfce-devel] Xfce plans for the lenny cycle

[Simon Huggins]

On Tue, Apr 17, 2007 at 06:11:29AM +0200, Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 13, 2007 at 10:40:34AM +0100, Simon Huggins wrote:
> > Also, padding is extremely frustrating.  The 4 month wait from December
> > to April effectively froze uploads from October/November[0] until April
> > which seemed a little too long.  If developers believe that you're
> > releasing in say October then we'll be more careful about uploads a
> > long time before the freeze but if we believe you're saying you're going
> > to release in October but really will slip by 4 months then we (and
> > presumably other developers) won't bother and your job becomes harder.
> And IMHO an appropriate response from the release team to such acts on the
> part of maintainers would be to kick the affected packages clean out of the
> release with no option of being readmitted.

> Timeline gaming and other selfish behaviors on the part of individual
> maintainers are a huge reason why Debian has a history of missing its
> release targets by such a wide margin[0].  If you care about timely
> releases and minimizing the out-of-dateness of software at the time of
> release, the responsible thing to do is to be /less/ selfish in
> response to schedules proposed by the release team, not to try to
> elbow your way past all other maintainers for the privilege of being
> the last uploader of untested packages to be included in the release.

I do care about timely releases and I hope you didn't think we were
selfish or trying to elbow our way past other maintainers during the
etch freeze.

There are always things that miss a release but had the freeze been
pushed back to February say (two months before the release as per the
original Oct -> Dec intention) then the January release of 4.4.0 may
well have been deemed stable enough to ship.  Who knows.

> > If you're going to more closely manage the next release (and this does
> > seem to be the message you're giving out so far) please, please, please
> > pick a firm date, tell everyone you're really serious about it and
> > somehow communicate that you really mean it to the rest of the project.
> The release team is a handful of developers who have finite time available
> between them to deal with all the release blockers that present themselves.
> IMO, anyone who doesn't help the release team meet those goals by working on
> release blockers in packages other than their own shouldn't have their
> opinions about schedule slippage weighted very heavily.

I'm not sure I saw any RC bugs that were simple enough that I felt
confident touching other people's packages that hung around long enough
unclaimed but yes, I can see your point.

> And, oh yeah, "we really mean that we want to release on date <X>" has
> no more power to compel maintainers to get their packages into a
> releasable shape than any other stick.

No, of course not.  But if the project as a whole genuinely believes you
then I believe that the timeline gaming and selfish behaviours of
maintainers would be lessened.  I guess trying to alter the mindset of
over 1000 people is hard but I think it's worth trying.

-- 
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Simon ----(      <jimbo> I just make all the decisions       )---- Nomis
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