[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Evergreen 2.5 - Introduction and Milestone 1 Details [RM2.5]

[Dan Wells]

Hello everyone,

After a couple weeks of suspense and anguish, you are now at last reading my first official communication as release manager [RM] for 2.5.  In the interest of general efficiency, and to encourage dialog over unnecessary detail, I will try to be succinct.

Announcements:
1) Hello world - For any who do not know, I am the release manager for Evergreen 2.5.  Unless you were at the dev meeting, you probably don't know, because I haven't (publicly) done anything yet.

2) Mailing list intentions - Rather than double-post everything for the next 4 months, future "official" 2.5 RM communications will typically be on the *general* list only.  Every developer should be on the general list, and my primary goal will be to keep everybody in the loop, not just the developers.  If you are a dev and are not on the general list (and you care about these messages, or Evergreen in general), please subscribe.

3) Mailing list "tag" - I'll be "tagging" any RM-specific emails with [RM2.5] in the subject line.  I don't know if this will be useful, but it seems like it might be helpful to me at least.

4) Concerning milestones
4a) Changing of "alpha" milestone - As implied by my original proposal, the current "2.5-alpha1" milestone is going to be renamed to "2.5-M1".  If you have anything in Launchpad tagged "alpha1" which you actually want to put off until then, you will need to move it to the new "alpha1" milestone (see next).
4b) Creating "planning" milestones - After alpha1 is renamed, I will immediately create an M2 milestone and a new alpha1 milestone.  These are meant to provide a way to set expectations for feature branch completion goals.  You are encouraged to post your feature descriptions as early as possible.
4c) Setting milestones based on the roadmap [1] - Any current feature tickets on the roadmap with a 'pullrequest' tag but no milestone will be set to M1.  Any without a 'pullrequest' tag will be initially set to M2.  If you are heading up development of any features, please feel free to adjust the goal milestones as appropriate.

5) Whitespace fix (revised plans) - There was concern at the dev meeting about my initial plan to split up the mass whitespace fix into three passes.  After further consideration and process testing, I now feel more confident that doing the fix all at once is both doable and preferable.  Sometime in the next week or so, I will make a first pass at creating some process instructions/tips and post them to the wiki.  The current intention is that the mass whitespace fix will happen immediately after the M1 phase.


Important Dates:
5/27 - (suggested) last day to target bugs/features for M1
6/3 - goal date for having all M1 bugs/features committed to master


So, developers, testers, and other contributors, the first big push for 2.5 commits will start 1.5 weeks from now and continue for 1 week.  I fully understand that there will be personal conflicts which prevent participation in this push, but with a little focus (and perhaps some poking and prodding), I am confident we can make it happen.

As always, questions, comments, concerns, and suggestions are welcome.

Sincerely,
Dan

[1] http://evergreen-ils.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=faqs:evergreen_roadmap:2.5