[Post 1.5.1 release]

[Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@apache.org>]

Hi guys,

we are almost done with 1.5.1 release (it's just a matter of a few hours 
before we annouce it). I would like to give you some perspective about 
the next release (1.5.2), as we will have to work hard to deliver it in 
a few weeks.

As stated, the 1.5.1 should have been released much sooner, but we 
didn't. Let's try to deliver 1.5.2 by mid october.

1) Open issues
------------------------
Here are some infos about the open bugs for 1.5.2 :

Total number of issues : 85

bugs                : 29 (B:3, C:3, M:20, m:2, T:1)
improvements : 28 (C:2, M:12, m:12, T:2)
new features   : 17 (C:1, M:10, m:6)
tasks               : 9 (C:1, M:5, m:2, T:1)
wishes             : 2 (M:1, m:1)

(B = Blocking, C = Critical, M = Major, m = minor, T = Trivial)

More than 100 issues have been fixed in 1.5.1, we will for sure hit the 
same number for 1.5.2. FYI, here are the numbers we get for 1.5.1 :
Total number of issues : 106

bugs                : 61 (B:9, C:4, M:39, m:9)
improvements : 27 (C:1, M:15, m:9, T:2)
new features   : 13 (M:7, m:6)
tasks               : 3 (M:3)
wishes             : 2 (M:1, T:1)

As you can see, we have twice the number of bugs in 1.5.0 than in 1.5.1. 
This is quite a good news.

2) Process
-----------------

The next release should be smoother than this one. We were in a hurry, 
many of us were having vacations, some of us had personnal issues to 
deal with. This is unavoidable, but we should be carefull when planning 
a release during summer, easter or christmas. It would also be 
interesting that active committers give a planning of their vacations 
when we try to define a release schedule.

It leads me to the next point : we may need a release manager for the 
last month before a release. The release manager role is quite easy, 
it's a kind of project manager. Dealing with planning, tasks, missing 
committers with an affected task, postponing tasks which can't be done 
by the milestone, stuff like that. The difference with real life 
projects is that we are all volunteers, so all 'resources' are not 
available on call.

3) Next release
-------------------------
I'm not sure we will add a lot of features in this next release, in my 
mind it would be much more a bug fix release. But it's not just about 
me, we need to discuss it.

For sure, we need 1.5.2 before ApacheCon US (Nov, 12-17). I'm not sure 
that any of us is going to Atlanta (may be David ?), but it's important 
to keep those Apache Conference as milestones for releases, as they are 
the place we can announce novelties and benefits from the ApacheCon buzz.

I would like to get 1.5.2 certified with the STANDARD compliance. I 
think it's possible, but we have to do a round trip with OG, as I 
_think_ that there are some bugs in their tests (to be confirmed).

We should also conduct real perfomance test, and compare ADS with 
previous versions (1.0.3, 1.5.0 and 1.5.1) and with other servers 
(OpenLdap, OpenDS and FDS). We have a load of machines, let's use them !

---------------

Ok, it's enough for me, I would like to get your feedbacks and feeling 
about this release, and about the server as a whole.

Thanks to everyone who participated on this release, especially those 
who killed themselves working hard hours in the last few days !

Thanks also to each users who endured severe bugs and filled JIRAs, to 
those who accepted to patiently wait for this release, without you, ADS 
would simply not progress !



Emmanuel

Re: [Post 1.5.1 release]

[Alex Karasulu <ak...@apache.org>]

Hi E,

On 9/2/07, Emmanuel Lecharny <el...@apache.org> wrote:
...

As stated, the 1.5.1 should have been released much sooner, but we
> didn't. Let's try to deliver 1.5.2 by mid october.


+1

2) Process
> -----------------
>
> The next release should be smoother than this one. We were in a hurry,
> many of us were having vacations, some of us had personnal issues to
> deal with. This is unavoidable, but we should be carefull when planning
> a release during summer, easter or christmas. It would also be
> interesting that active committers give a planning of their vacations
> when we try to define a release schedule.
>
> It leads me to the next point : we may need a release manager for the
> last month before a release. The release manager role is quite easy,
> it's a kind of project manager. Dealing with planning, tasks, missing
> committers with an affected task, postponing tasks which can't be done
> by the milestone, stuff like that. The difference with real life
> projects is that we are all volunteers, so all 'resources' are not
> available on call.


I could not agree with you more on this.  And as you stated at some point it

has to be someone who is objective and not trying to fix the bugs
themselves.

3) Next release
> -------------------------
> I'm not sure we will add a lot of features in this next release, in my
> mind it would be much more a bug fix release. But it's not just about
> me, we need to discuss it.


Yes I think we should only focus on a few points keeping the next release
simple:

  o code cleanup so we can be more efficient
  o architectural changes
  o bug fixes

Some features/improvements/wishes can be handled if they facilitate the
above
points.

For sure, we need 1.5.2 before ApacheCon US (Nov, 12-17). I'm not sure
> that any of us is going to Atlanta (may be David ?), but it's important
> to keep those Apache Conference as milestones for releases, as they are
> the place we can announce novelties and benefits from the ApacheCon buzz.
>
> I would like to get 1.5.2 certified with the STANDARD compliance. I
> think it's possible, but we have to do a round trip with OG, as I
> _think_ that there are some bugs in their tests (to be confirmed).


I would like to do this which will help cleanup the referral handling
issues.  I
also want solid infrastructure setup around running these tests at the push
of
a button so we're not pinging Zoerner everytime we need to run the test.

Hopefully we can get some hardware soon to do this but 40 days may not be
enough.  Regardless this is something we need to get the ball rolling on.

We should also conduct real perfomance test, and compare ADS with
> previous versions (1.0.3, 1.5.0 and 1.5.1) and with other servers
> (OpenLdap, OpenDS and FDS). We have a load of machines, let's use them !


Yes we need to setup the infrastructure to do this as well.  The SLAMD
environment
will be critical.

---------------
>
> Ok, it's enough for me, I would like to get your feedbacks and feeling
> about this release, and about the server as a whole.


Well this release realy sucked IMO because of the pressure element.  It did
not
feel like an OS thing.  But we did not plan ahead of time so this could have
been
avoided.  It and was also a lower quality release even though it was jammed
with
goodies like the new installers and improved functionality.  I guess that
harmless
stack trace with the unbind handler really sticks me in the side, I hate
seeing it
and if it was not for LDAP Con I would have cast a -1 on this release.  I
keep
telling myself that this is just a feature introduction release but I want
to make
sure we don't slip on our quality even if it's a feature introduction
release.

Thanks to everyone who participated on this release, especially those
> who killed themselves working hard hours in the last few days !


Yeah lot's of people went above and beyond the call of duty to make it
happen so
fast.  Really this was a lot of work but I want to make sure we don't burn
out our
people by planning a little better.  As a community this is the next stage.
Perhaps
some altered form SCRUM techniques may be used to lessen the slippage along
with an independent release/project manager.

Alex