Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2008 20:57:37 +1100 From: Aristedes Maniatis <ari@ish.com.au> To: freebsd-stable Stable <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: visibility of release process Message-ID: <B167228B-64FA-49D7-8AF7-55F5E4852EA0@ish.com.au>
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I've resisted sending this email for a while since I really don't want to start a bikeshed nor a flame. However there comes a time to express my thoughts over the lack of visibility of the release process for FreeBSD 7.1. Here are the resources I am aware of: * release timeline [1]. This page makes no mention of beta 2 which is now some weeks old, so I assume the page is not actively used as a communication tool for the status of the release. * this list [2]. Although betas are announced here, there is no information about what is happening next. * subversion. Without checking out the whole repository, it is a little hard to use this as a news source and emails to the commit list still look more like cvs than svn so it is a bit hard to see which branch commits are going to. [3] * the bug tracker. Let's just say that FreeBSD's bug tracker is fairly primitive and 'target release' is not an option. I'd like to make several suggestions which could improve the transparency of the release process: 1. Short term fix: re could make a progress announcement on the appropriate lists every 14 days during the release process. Just a short summary of URLs pointing to the bug tracker. 2. Some web based friendly end-user visibility on the commit process, per branch. People can see what is going in and being fixed, but not what is left outstanding. Fisheye is an option because it costs nothing except the small load on the svn server. 3. Improvements to the bug tracker. Personally I'd love to see something like Jira used [4] with all the sophistication of workflow, release notes, voting for bugs, etc, etc. I'm happy to help with 2 and/or 3 in terms of contribution of my time and experience. Cheers Ari Maniatis [1] http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.1R/schedule.html [2] That is FreeBSD-stable [3] I've also made an attempt to have Atlassian use Fisheye to produce an friendly overview of the repository, however I need to get permission from FreeBSD for this to happen before Atlassian will go ahead and index the whole svn repository. I've been unable to get anyone to respond to my requests in that regard. The result might look a bit like this: http://fisheye6.atlassian.com/ [4] Disclaimer: I am an Atlassian partner and like their products, but stand to gain nothing by the decision FreeBSD core make, I just think it is the best product for FreeBSD's requirements and it works well over at Apache. --------------------------> ish http://www.ish.com.au Level 1, 30 Wilson Street Newtown 2042 Australia phone +61 2 9550 5001 fax +61 2 9550 4001 GPG fingerprint CBFB 84B4 738D 4E87 5E5C 5EFA EF6A 7D2E 3E49 102A
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