Hi,
Tails 0.18 will be a "major" release:
it may bring more than bugfixes in.
There are questions bellow for both developers and translators,
so please read on.
I'd like to experiment some variations on the theme of the release
schedule we've agreed upon last year. The main goals are to make our
release workload considerably lighter, and to have a release out ASAP
after the Firefox ESR is announced.
Here's the preliminary release schedule for Tails 0.18:
2013-05-03 freeze, build and upload Tails 0.18~rc1 ISO
2013-05-04 test Tails 0.18~rc1
2013-05-05 release Tails 0.18~rc1
2013-05-13 Firefox 17.0.6 ESR is out, let's package it
2013-05-14 build and upload Tails 0.18 ISO
2013-05-15 test Tails 0.18
2013-05-16 release Tails 0.18
You probably want to add the two testing days (May 4th and 15th)
to your agenda.
So, what changes and why?
1. No RC2, release soon after Firefox ESR is out instead
========================================================
Basically, the proposal I'm making is to turn our "usual" RC2 into the
final release, more or less. No kidding. Crazy, uh?
First, it's been quite rare that our RC2 helped to discover bugs that
were worth fixing for the final release, and that we could safely fix
during deep freeze. RC2 is IMHO less valuable than what I thought.
Second, I'd like to shorten the time during which Tails users are
vulnerable to know Firefox security issues.
Third, I do hope that enough of our test suite will be automated, at
the end of April, so that we can a. save some time between ESR is out
and our release; b. focus developers' and testers' time on more
creative real-world testing; c. spread our testing effort over
less periods.
So, my proposal would be that people who usually would have spent half
a day running the manual test suite for RC2, and half a day running it
again a week later for the final ISO, instead:
* seriously play with the RC1 between May 5th and May 14th
* on May 4th and May 15th: spend much less time than usual on manual
tests; instead, do some more creative testing (and list additional
tests that could be worth automating!)
I'm trying to think something through with the resources we usually
have at release time, to start with, but anyone else is obviously
welcome to participate!
A downside of not having a RC2 is that translators can't see the
result of their work in a live system. I'd like to know how
translators feel about that.
2. Freeze a bit later
=====================
I've felt a few times that freezing only three weeks after a release
gives little time for development. I find it a bit frustrating and
limiting. So, I've postponed the 0.18 freeze as much as I could, while
keeping the RC1 useful (9 days of testing).
With this schedule, translators have a bit less time than the usual
two weeks to do their job between May 3rd and May 14th. To mitigate
this, I suggest that developers who have their feature ready and
merged before the freeze date send their updated PO files to
translators ASAP, so that the translation work is a bit less done in
a rush between the RC1 and the release.
Thoughts?
Cheers,
--
intrigeri
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