2.1.0 milestone progress report for 2017-07-28

[Joan Touzet <wo...@apache.org>]

Happy Friday everyone!

TL;DR: Significant progress has been made towards 2.1.0. I anticipate
a Release Candidate early next week.

Here are the remaining issues blocking 2.1.0:

  https://github.com/apache/couchdb/milestone/2

Only 3 issues remain:

* 1 minor feature ticket:
  * #593, improving the _cluster_setup endpoint/Fauxton wizard for
    single-node automatic setup. On master this feature is broken
    and awaiting support from Fauxton/JS developers to carry the PR
    across the finish line.

* 1 test-case related failure:
  * #574, a replication race condition leading to failure in certain
    replications involving large attachments. A full analysis is now
    posted in the ticket. This bug has been in CouchDB for some time.
    If a suitable fix cannot be determined quickly, we will note this
    as a known issue in the release notes.

* #642 is build pipeline related, and strictly speaking does not block
  a 2.1 release. It addresses automation of package building,
  publication of "convenience builds" for those binaries, and
  migration of the Docker image into the apache/couchdb namespace.
  About 90% of the work has been completed or deferred until after
  release.

As part of the work on #642, my temporary Debian/RedHat repositories
have been retired. The new repositories for these 'convenience binaries'
are hosted on Apache's bintray, and documented here:

  http://docs.couchdb.org/en/latest/install/unix.html#installation-using-the-apache-couchdb-convenience-binary-packages

2.0.0 packages are still considered beta; no changes will be made to
them going forward. 2.1.0 packages will appear shortly after the
official 2.1.0 release has been made.

As to our CI pipeline, we are now at the point where green means pass
and red definitely means "problem." Both the Travis and Jenkins
results are meaningful. (The current failure on Jenkins master is
related to the Docker setup and will be resolved in the next 8 hours.)
Developers, start paying attention to the automated Travis runs on your
PRs! We will refuse to merge something when the build fails.

Solely for the consumption of this developer mailing list, automated
package builds of select branches are available through our private
repo at https://repo-nightly.couchdb.org/ . Absolutely no support for
these packages is provided. Each new build on a branch will completely
erase previous packages from that branch. Further, it is strictly
mandated by ASF policy[1] that these packages not be distributed outside
of our immediate developer community. If we (the CouchDB PMC) determine
these packages are being advertised (on Twitter, blog posts, etc.) or
being used for production work, the entire system will be discontinued
and taken offline. Do Not Make Us Do This. We have faith in y'all! :)

We also have posted the 'convenience binary' build for Ubuntu snaps:

  http://docs.couchdb.org/en/latest/install/snap.html

And, shortly, the Docker images will be moving to the apache/couchdb
namespace at Docker Hub.

We're in the home stretch!

-Joan

[1]: See http://www.apache.org/dev/release-distribution.html#unreleased
     and especially the two middle bullet points there.