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This page is to document "what Tiki should do". For feature documentation (what Tiki does), please see corresponding page on doc site
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Freeze and Slush

This is a draft (more of a collection of ideas than a plan/guideline)


As a growing community, to be efficient, we must have a common understanding of Where to Commit, but we must also get a common understanding of When to commit.

This page will attempt to describe a consensus on when to commit so we can all converge and be ready to release according to the Lifecycle.

Reverse-planning / Work-Back Schedule


This part needs to be much precise

when what
1 month before technical release (feature-freeze) where all translations (with automatic syntax checking) and promotional material can be prepared.
2 months before All minor new features should be in trunk so they can be tested in time for the release.
3 months before All major new features should be in trunk so they can be tested in time for the release.


The big underlying questions:

  • Will it be good enough in time for the next scheduled release?
  • What are the risks of introducing regressions?


The closer we are to the release, the more risk free your contributions should be


In case of doubt, coordinate with release coordinator. These are questions that come to mind:

  • If you do introduce a bug, will we find quickly and will you fix very quickly? (ex.: within 24h) (or are you the dump-and-disappear-and-let-someone-else-cleanup-my-mess type of developer)
  • If you do introduce a bug, is it for something localized (ex: change css for one theme) ? or can it affect everyone (ex.: login process)
  • Are you an experienced developer and you "know" where the risk areas are?
  • Are you affecting a lot of files?
    • Did you test every single file? (mass search and replace sometimes go wrong)
    • Which can make it difficult to review
    • Which can make the merge from stable to trunk more difficult
  • Are you introducing a database change?
    • In general, DB changes should be done early in the process
  • Has this code been used in production for a reasonable time-frame?

Types of changes

Major changes that affect the whole application.

These should be done fairly early in a cycle. So we have several months to iron-out all the issues. A backward-compatibility layer should be provided. Ex.: Permission cleanup, new modules system, etc. It's a good idea to start these in an Experimental branch.

Major change to existing features.

How will upgrades be handled?

New self-contained features

These can arrive quite late. If they are not ready for prime-time, just tag as experimental.

Inspiration

http://live.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/Freezes

Related



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Page last modified on Wednesday 28 September, 2011 15:13:01 UTC

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Keywords

The following is a list of keywords that should serve as hubs for navigation within the Tiki development and should correspond to documentation keywords.

Each feature in Tiki has a wiki page which regroups all the bugs, requests for enhancements, etc. It is somewhat a form of wiki-based project management. You can also express your interest in a feature by adding it to your profile. You can also try out the Dynamic filter.