Release process changes

Anything related to PR, release planning and any other non-technical idea how to move the project forward should be discussed here.
MetaCthulhu
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Re: Release process changes

Post by MetaCthulhu »

If you do go with option 2, would the hidden section ever be displayed? Like, after a release would the dev forum for that release be displayed? I know this sounds silly, but I really like reading all the technical information and seeing all the internal communications that go on. You guys have work to do, and I don't want to get in the way of that, but I'd be disappointed if everything stayed behind closed doors forever.

But I'm not a dev, tester, publicity guy, or project leader; I'm just a guy who lurks a lot, and maybe listening to me isn't in your best interest. :?
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raevol
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Re: Release process changes

Post by raevol »

Honestly the only thing we need to keep "secret" is the links to the youtube videos, changelog, RC packages, and if possible (poor psi29a!) keep the PPAs from updating before we are ready. All the discussion could be public, it's just those things that need to be kept under wraps.

To be clear, I don't want to "hide" things from the public because we are afraid of a "leak". This is open source software, it's not like we lose money if our stuff gets released. The only think I am trying to avoid is all the miscommuncation- people seeing the packages available for download or update, then coming to the forums and seeing the video links, and then because they don't read the rest of the thread, wondering why we haven't publicly announced the release. It's just a miscommunication issue that I would like to fix.

EDIT: I mean there's more than that as far as what needs to be fixed in our release process... but that's what needs to be fixed as far as hiding things from the public.
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lysol
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Re: Release process changes

Post by lysol »

raevol wrote:Honestly the only thing we need to keep "secret" is the links to the youtube videos, changelog, RC packages, and if possible (poor psi29a!) keep the PPAs from updating before we are ready. All the discussion could be public, it's just those things that need to be kept under wraps.
That's true really. Zini's "OpenMW 0.41" thread does not have to be hidden at all. He can do it the usual way. It's just the videos and the RC's that need the hidden forums.

So here's a revised list of the one I did earlier:

The public "Organisation and Planning" forum:
  • Zini's release thread
Hidden release forum:
  • Windows RC thread
  • OSX RC thread
  • Linux tar RC (+ apt?) thread
  • Video thread
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psi29a
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Re: Release process changes

Post by psi29a »

Canonical's PPA supports "Private PPA" but it isn't automatic. I had to send an email and I'm waiting for a reply.

Essentially, you have to have access rights to the PPA which is managed by the admins of the OpenMW group for example. For there I'm not sure of the details, but the idea is that it would be a 'staging area', and when we are ready for a drop, someone copies the working packages from staging over to our public PPA.

Also... I've enabled support for ARM packages so that our brothers on ARM based systems (Raspberry Pi) can also use the PPA. We will now support the following:
AMD x86-64 (amd64)
ARM ARMv8 (arm64)
ARM ARMv7 Soft Float (armel)
ARM ARMv7 Hard Float (armhf)
Intel x86 (i386)
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Atahualpa
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Re: Release process changes

Post by Atahualpa »

@lysol: Three things to add.

1. For the sake of completeness: The hidden forums would also include other internal discussion. E.g., I would like to move my FAQ videos thread there.
2. We'd also have to hide raevol's change log because it contains the video links. (Yes, we could omit them until the release is ready but I don't consider this very elegant.)
3. With (2): We need a general release status thread.

->

Team forums
  • <read first>
  • <general announcements>
  • Release forums
    • Release status thread
    • Windows RC thread
    • OSX RC thread
    • Linux tar RC (+ apt?) thread
    • Video thread
  • Public Relations forums
    • FAQ videos thread
    • Making fun of regular users thread
    • Commercialising OpenMW thread
    • ...
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raevol
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Re: Release process changes

Post by raevol »

psi29a wrote:Essentially, you have to have access rights to the PPA which is managed by the admins of the OpenMW group for example. For there I'm not sure of the details, but the idea is that it would be a 'staging area', and when we are ready for a drop, someone copies the working packages from staging over to our public PPA.
I don't want to throw extra work on you, but if you're willing to deal with it, it'd be amazing... :shock:
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sjek
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Re: Release process changes

Post by sjek »

would it be possible to use link / file hiding properties like in other forums ?
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lgromanowski
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Re: Release process changes

Post by lgromanowski »

For PR related thing we could reuse "Dark penguins of chaos squad" group and sub-forum created by SirHerrbatka, create "release forums" and than add people from "Dark penguins" group + related to release management.
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psi29a
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Re: Release process changes

Post by psi29a »

I think this is for the best, better signal to noise ratio between developers, packagers and release managers. For release and other "internal kitchen" stuff, this is a OK way of handling it.
darkbasic
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Re: Release process changes

Post by darkbasic »

lysol wrote:
raevol wrote:Honestly the only thing we need to keep "secret" is the links to the youtube videos, changelog, RC packages, and if possible (poor psi29a!) keep the PPAs from updating before we are ready. All the discussion could be public, it's just those things that need to be kept under wraps.
That's true really. Zini's "OpenMW 0.41" thread does not have to be hidden at all. He can do it the usual way. It's just the videos and the RC's that need the hidden forums.
Agree on the release videos, but I don't agree on changelogs and RC packages. This is a FOSS project, everyone has access to the git repo and everyone can pull rc tags. Testing should be encouraged: hiding discussions in private areas you are simply going to kill interest from outsiders. If they are not going to be interested they will never join the private areas and the project will slowly starve. Do it in public, raise interest, encourage testing, just strip the youtube links and avoid publishing packages on PPAs before you're ready. Also final version on git shouldn't be tagged until you're *really* ready to release. In the meantime branch it, tag RCs and test RCs: you can't blame a package maintainer for updating his package because he got an automatic notification that a new stable release has been tagged.
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