Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[David Bosschaert <da...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

Every time I do a release in the Felix community I am thinking:
there's too many manual steps involved here, some of which seem to be
unnecessary as they seem duplicative. I'm wondering whether all these
steps are necessary? Especially since other Apache communities are not
performing all of them...

Here's what I always do (I hope I didn't forget anything...)

Preparing the release:
1. Some components have a changelog.txt that needs to be updated. This
information generally is directly copied&pasted from JIRA.
2. Release is prepared, tagged and staged in Apache Nexus.
3. Release vote email is sent out.

After the vote has succeeded:
4. Vote conclusion email is sent out
5. Release is published in Maven Nexus
6. Release artifacts are copied into dist SVN
7. Jira is updated, component version marked as released
8. Website News section is updated
9. Website Download section is updated (I still find this very awkward
to do as I still haven't found out how to do this from the CMS browser
editor)
10. Release is registered at https://reporter.apache.org/addrelease.html?felix

While some steps are obviously required some of them don't seem to add
a lot of value.
* Step 1 - changelog.txt. This info is direcly from JIRA, so whats the
extra value? People can just look it up in JIRA!
* Step 6 - the artifacts are already in Apache Maven
(https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/org/apache/felix/),
so why do they need to be copied to another location (dist) too?
* Step 8 - while it seems useful to have some sort of a news section
on the website, the current one simply lists released versions without
any interesting details so I don't think it provides any value to
users.
* Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
more...
* Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
to describe the component release again...

Not sure what others think and maybe some of these steps are required
from an ASF point of view, but in my opinion it would be nice if we
could get rid of the manual and duplicative tasks as much as
possible...

Cheers,

David

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[Benson Margulies <bi...@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 7:14 AM, David Bosschaert
<da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Every time I do a release in the Felix community I am thinking:
> there's too many manual steps involved here, some of which seem to be
> unnecessary as they seem duplicative. I'm wondering whether all these
> steps are necessary? Especially since other Apache communities are not
> performing all of them...
>
> Here's what I always do (I hope I didn't forget anything...)
>
> Preparing the release:
> 1. Some components have a changelog.txt that needs to be updated. This
> information generally is directly copied&pasted from JIRA.
> 2. Release is prepared, tagged and staged in Apache Nexus.
> 3. Release vote email is sent out.
>
> After the vote has succeeded:
> 4. Vote conclusion email is sent out
> 5. Release is published in Maven Nexus
> 6. Release artifacts are copied into dist SVN
> 7. Jira is updated, component version marked as released
> 8. Website News section is updated
> 9. Website Download section is updated (I still find this very awkward
> to do as I still haven't found out how to do this from the CMS browser
> editor)
> 10. Release is registered at https://reporter.apache.org/addrelease.html?felix
>
> While some steps are obviously required some of them don't seem to add
> a lot of value.
> * Step 1 - changelog.txt. This info is direcly from JIRA, so whats the
> extra value? People can just look it up in JIRA!

Some projects use the maven-changes-plugin to read the data from JIRA
and incorporate it automatically.

> * Step 6 - the artifacts are already in Apache Maven
> (https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/org/apache/felix/),
> so why do they need to be copied to another location (dist) too?

The source-release.zip file must be in dist by Foundation policy.

> * Step 8 - while it seems useful to have some sort of a news section
> on the website, the current one simply lists released versions without
> any interesting details so I don't think it provides any value to
> users.
> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
> more...

See above. The board decided that 'the official releases' have to come
from the dist area where only PMC members have access to put them.
Whether we could set up some scripting or automation to make that
easier ...

> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
> to describe the component release again...

The reporter is part of the board's tracking of the project. We could
write a maven plugin to poke it REST-fully, I guess.

>
> Not sure what others think and maybe some of these steps are required
> from an ASF point of view, but in my opinion it would be nice if we
> could get rid of the manual and duplicative tasks as much as
> possible...
>
> Cheers,
>
> David

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org>]

Am 17.11.15 um 07:12 schrieb Guillaume Nodet:
> 2015-11-17 10:35 GMT+01:00 David Bosschaert <da...@gmail.com>:
> 
>> On 17 November 2015 at 00:37, Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org>
>> wrote:
>>>> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
>>>> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
>>>> more...
>>> Nope, all official releases must come from Apache.
>>
>> They would still come from Apache: https://repository.apache.org is an
>> Apache server, just a difference one than the SVN one...
>>
> 
> That's a valid point.  We may not need both locations, or maybe we could
> sync both automatically.
> That's a question for infra I suppose.

We should not forget that some projects do not use Maven, so whatever we
do must work for everyone.


Carsten

> 
> 
>>
>>>> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
>>>> to describe the component release again...
>>> This is not a required step and we can definitely skip it.
>>
>> Funny because I only got to know about this one because some trigger
>> (probably the one from committing it to the dist repo) always sends me
>> an email about it https://reporter.apache.org to remind me - you must
>> have better spam rules than I do... the subject is always 'Please add
>> your release data for 'felix''
>> However that https://reporter.apache.org seems to have one handy
>> function: it auto-generates the board report email for the project..
>>
> 
> Yeah, those emails are generated when you commit into the dist repo.
> But only to the one doing the release afaik.
> 
> 
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> David
>>
> 


-- 
Carsten Ziegeler
Adobe Research Switzerland
cziegeler@apache.org

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[Guillaume Nodet <gn...@apache.org>]

2015-11-17 10:35 GMT+01:00 David Bosschaert <da...@gmail.com>:

> On 17 November 2015 at 00:37, Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org>
> wrote:
> >> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
> >> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
> >> more...
> > Nope, all official releases must come from Apache.
>
> They would still come from Apache: https://repository.apache.org is an
> Apache server, just a difference one than the SVN one...
>

That's a valid point.  We may not need both locations, or maybe we could
sync both automatically.
That's a question for infra I suppose.


>
> >> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
> >> to describe the component release again...
> > This is not a required step and we can definitely skip it.
>
> Funny because I only got to know about this one because some trigger
> (probably the one from committing it to the dist repo) always sends me
> an email about it https://reporter.apache.org to remind me - you must
> have better spam rules than I do... the subject is always 'Please add
> your release data for 'felix''
> However that https://reporter.apache.org seems to have one handy
> function: it auto-generates the board report email for the project..
>

Yeah, those emails are generated when you commit into the dist repo.
But only to the one doing the release afaik.


>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org>]

Am 17.11.15 um 04:35 schrieb David Bosschaert:
> On 17 November 2015 at 00:37, Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org> wrote:
>>> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
>>> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
>>> more...
>> Nope, all official releases must come from Apache.
> 
> They would still come from Apache: https://repository.apache.org is an
> Apache server, just a difference one than the SVN one...
> 
>>> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
>>> to describe the component release again...
>> This is not a required step and we can definitely skip it.
> 
> Funny because I only got to know about this one because some trigger
> (probably the one from committing it to the dist repo) always sends me
> an email about it https://reporter.apache.org to remind me - you must
> have better spam rules than I do... the subject is always 'Please add
> your release data for 'felix''

This is a new function which has been added some months back. It's an
optional step and by adding the release there we could use this to
generate the board report. But it's not required and as we do the board
report manually (and I have no problem doing so), we don't need to do this.

Carsten

> However that https://reporter.apache.org seems to have one handy
> function: it auto-generates the board report email for the project..
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David
> 


-- 
Carsten Ziegeler
Adobe Research Switzerland
cziegeler@apache.org

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[David Bosschaert <da...@gmail.com>]

On 17 November 2015 at 00:37, Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org> wrote:
>> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
>> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
>> more...
> Nope, all official releases must come from Apache.

They would still come from Apache: https://repository.apache.org is an
Apache server, just a difference one than the SVN one...

>> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
>> to describe the component release again...
> This is not a required step and we can definitely skip it.

Funny because I only got to know about this one because some trigger
(probably the one from committing it to the dist repo) always sends me
an email about it https://reporter.apache.org to remind me - you must
have better spam rules than I do... the subject is always 'Please add
your release data for 'felix''
However that https://reporter.apache.org seems to have one handy
function: it auto-generates the board report email for the project..

Cheers,

David

Re: Reducing the number of manual steps in peforming a release at Felix?

[Carsten Ziegeler <cz...@apache.org>]

Am 16.11.15 um 07:14 schrieb David Bosschaert:
> Hi all,
> 
> Every time I do a release in the Felix community I am thinking:
> there's too many manual steps involved here, some of which seem to be
> unnecessary as they seem duplicative. I'm wondering whether all these
> steps are necessary? Especially since other Apache communities are not
> performing all of them...

And even worse, sometimes people simply forget some of the steps...

> 
> Here's what I always do (I hope I didn't forget anything...)
> 
> Preparing the release:
> 1. Some components have a changelog.txt that needs to be updated. This
> information generally is directly copied&pasted from JIRA.

I never understood why we provide this and maintain it by hand. But only
some projects do this.

> 2. Release is prepared, tagged and staged in Apache Nexus.
> 3. Release vote email is sent out.
Would be great if sending the mail could be automated. I guess it would
be easy to do so as part of the maven release process.

> 
> After the vote has succeeded:
> 4. Vote conclusion email is sent out
> 5. Release is published in Maven Nexus
> 6. Release artifacts are copied into dist SVN
While this is an extra step, we need the artifacts at Apache. With the
check script we have it's simple to do. But I agree it's annoying.

> 7. Jira is updated, component version marked as released
> 8. Website News section is updated
> 9. Website Download section is updated (I still find this very awkward
> to do as I still haven't found out how to do this from the CMS browser
> editor)

> 10. Release is registered at https://reporter.apache.org/addrelease.html?felix
Never heard of this one :)

> 
> While some steps are obviously required some of them don't seem to add
> a lot of value.
> * Step 1 - changelog.txt. This info is direcly from JIRA, so whats the
> extra value? People can just look it up in JIRA!
> * Step 6 - the artifacts are already in Apache Maven
> (https://repository.apache.org/content/repositories/releases/org/apache/felix/),
> so why do they need to be copied to another location (dist) too?
> * Step 8 - while it seems useful to have some sort of a news section
> on the website, the current one simply lists released versions without
> any interesting details so I don't think it provides any value to
> users.
I kind of agree. On the other hand, if we don't do this, we have no news
at all (which is sad). We could add a link to the changelog for each
release :) (the one in Jira of course)

> * Step 9 - the downloads page can be made to point to the Maven Repo
> which will mean that it does not need to be manually updated any
> more...
Nope, all official releases must come from Apache.

> * Step 10 - this info is available in JIRA, it should not be necessary
> to describe the component release again...
This is not a required step and we can definitely skip it.

Carsten
> 
> Not sure what others think and maybe some of these steps are required
> from an ASF point of view, but in my opinion it would be nice if we
> could get rid of the manual and duplicative tasks as much as
> possible...
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> David
> 


-- 
Carsten Ziegeler
Adobe Research Switzerland
cziegeler@apache.org