[cle-release-team] Reviewing the CLE 2.9.3 release

[Matthew Jones]

Yea, I've kept the document pretty up-to-date as there are a lot of time
between releases (at least a few months) and I would forget how to do it
otherwise. There still are random things that go wrong that need to be
fixed that someone without moderate technical skills wouldn't be able to
figure out. These are often random problems with the build server (when it
upgrades or something) and Jenkins. There are also random problems with the
build that aren't noticed (test cases failing, poms incorrect, the pack
module out of date), and occasional problems with Sonatype. I take a good
amount of time to manually verify the correct artifact and the correct
version is uploaded before releasing as in a prior release (2.9.1?) I think
it had the wrong parent or something because of a missed step in the
process. I missed a step this time too (committing the svn externals
properties) but luckily I'd made the change locally so this was very minor
and easy to fix. Managing the indies, releasing them then waiting for it
all to complete is quite time consuming and an overnight process in any
case, though mostly waiting, checking and fixing anything that goes wrong.

In the past when there was less releases, the process was for Anthony to go
to some place with really high speed internet and upload all of the
artifacts (jars) to source.sakaiproject.org. I'm not sure how a monolithic
release if we did that for 2.10 would work out for artifact deployment or
if that would even be necessary, but there are things like that which would
need to be worked out. We could possibly do the build on a VM with an
existing high speed connection, but that would be a pre-requisite.



On Fri, Aug 23, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Earle Nietzel <enietzel at anisakai.com>wrote:

> There was some discussion of this at the cle team call on 8/22 but it was
> mentioned that there is still a good amount of work that needs to be done
> to further automate the build.
>
> It appears to be well documented here
> https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/REL/Sakai+CLE+release+guide
>
> Maybe a quick outline of what automation tasks remain.
>
> I'd just like to say thanks to everyone who has made the release process
> better, especially Matt.
>
> best regards,
> Earle
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:44 PM, Steve Swinsburg <
> steve.swinsburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My only feedback at this stage is that having only Longsight doing the
>> releases is less than ideal. I have always been on the opinion that this
>> needs to be brought back to the centre. Longsight do a fantastic job of it,
>> no doubt about that, but if priorities change  or there are local issues to
>> deal with as a priority, as is the nature of a business, then the community
>> release timeline may suffer as a result.
>>
>> As you know, I have done a few 2.8 releases but even that fits around my
>> schedule and can suffer too.
>>
>> Is there any scope for the releasing to be done by Apereo?
>>
>> Cheers
>> S
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>> On 23/08/2013, at 6:23, Neal Caidin <neal.caidin at apereo.org> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> On the call today we reviewed the 2.9.3 release.
>>
>> If there are ways to improve the process to do a better job for the next
>> release, it would be good to capture this while the release is still fresh
>> in our minds.
>>
>> Here are some of my takeaways from the meeting:
>>
>> Now
>> -------------
>> * Dr. Chuck reminded us to stay positive and celebrate getting out
>> another maintenance release. Good reminder IMO. Good to celebrate the
>> things that were successfull about the release - fixing an important
>> gradebook issue, getting AntiSamy on by default, having our 3rd
>> maintanenance release since 2.9.0 was released in November. That's 3 maints
>> in 10 months.
>>
>> * My sense is that we are all disappointed at how late the release came
>> out. We really wanted to get the release out in late July, not mid-late
>> August.
>>
>> * We discussed the process - consensus vs having designated decision
>> maker(s) for getting out the release. I got the sense that we are sticking
>> with consensus.
>>
>> * The consensus process did not break down. We did make decisions and
>> stick with them, but they added up to a significant slip in the date.
>>
>> * Not everyone on CLE  release team is aware of overhead once release
>> decision is made. We still need TCC approval and this particular build fell
>> at the busiest time of year, plus Longsight group are the only ones
>> building the releases. All the overhead adds up being a couple of weeks to
>> get a release out, roughly, after the decision to release is made.
>>
>>
>> Future - things to improve the process
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>> * Supporting Anthony's proposal(s) for streamlining the TCC part of the
>> process for maintenance releases is something that likely will help.
>>
>> * Perhaps we should be firmer about adding new items in a release,
>> blocker or no.  Though I think we all agree that
>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAK-23733 is a blocker-level fix,
>> perhaps we could have pushed out 2.9.3 without it and just included the fix
>> in release notes as a later patch? That was one suggestion. Same with
>> https://jira.sakaiproject.org/browse/SAM-973 though there was also
>> consensus that this was not a blocker-level issue. Also don't forget we had
>> WebDav issues crop up too.
>>
>> * How to be firmer in our scope management? We discussed having
>> designated decision maker(s), but that didn't get much traction (sticking
>> with consensus). And we discussed having a Rubric to help with the decision
>> making. That idea was greeted with skepticism.  Figuring out if we want to
>> be firmer in scope management and how to do it is probably worth more
>> discussion/exploration IMO.
>>
>> If you made it this far and didn't fall into TL;DR, would be interested
>> in seeing reactions.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Neal
>>
>>
>>
>> Neal Caidin
>> Sakai CLE Community Coordinator
>> neal.caidin at apereo.org
>> Skype: nealkdin
>> Twitter: ncaidin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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