Regarding 1.2.1 Release

[Anirudh <an...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

After an offline discussion, the current decision is to block the 1.2.1
release, improve the warning message for save_params usage here:
https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11532 ,
cut a new RC and then restart the voting process.

Anirudh

Re: Regarding 1.2.1 Release

[Anirudh <an...@gmail.com>]

Hi Sergio and MXNet community,


I wanted to summarize the reasons for requesting a new RC of 1.2.1:


The warning message “save_params is deprecated , please use save_parameters
instead” was confusing because the new API ‘save_parameters’ which
deprecated ‘save_params’ could be used in 2 contexts and one of them would
break when used.

1. the new API save_parameters was intended only for imperative gluon
blocks.

2. When save_parameters is used with SymbolBlocks it would break the user
code that loads the model and parameters later.

This was raised on the dev@ list:

https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/8c6fa3ef5a7fa5a90b46293f22da955df3455e80046895dc67dbc8c6@%3Cdev.mxnet.apache.org%3E
and discussed offline about the impact and realized this will lead to bad
user experience and frustration.

This PR fixes the warning message:
https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11532


What could have been done better?


Voting and initial discussions on the issues in 1.2.1 rc0, happened on dev@
list. However, further discussion and decision for a new RC of the release
happened in person with the committers who raised concerns. We should have
either continued the discussion on dev@ or summarized the discussion and
sought more opinions from the community on dev@.


I ask mentors and community members to suggest any areas of improvement we
can incorporate in such situations to minimize the time spent by community.


Thanks,


Anirudh



On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 8:21 PM, Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org> wrote:

> Besides that I can't agree with the arguments about the warning at
> 1.2.1-RC1-incubating, but I guess I haven't much to say. Remember that "if
> it didn't happen on a mailing list, it didn't happen".
>
> On Mon, Jul 2, 2018, 17:37 Anirudh <an...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > After an offline discussion, the current decision is to block the 1.2.1
> > release, improve the warning message for save_params usage here:
> > https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11532 ,
> > cut a new RC and then restart the voting process.
> >
> > Anirudh
> >
>

Re: Regarding 1.2.1 Release

[Sergio Fernández <wi...@apache.org>]

Besides that I can't agree with the arguments about the warning at
1.2.1-RC1-incubating, but I guess I haven't much to say. Remember that "if
it didn't happen on a mailing list, it didn't happen".

On Mon, Jul 2, 2018, 17:37 Anirudh <an...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> After an offline discussion, the current decision is to block the 1.2.1
> release, improve the warning message for save_params usage here:
> https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/pull/11532 ,
> cut a new RC and then restart the voting process.
>
> Anirudh
>