[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Proposal to be release manager for Evergreen 3.0

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

I am putting my hat in the ring to be release manager for Evergreen
3.0 as the autumn 2017 release of Evergreen. As has been discussed by
the development community, most recently during the Hack-A-Way, 3.0
would represent the first release where the community supports and
recommends the web staff client for full production use. 3.0 would
also mark the deprecation of the XUL staff client.  As release
manager, I would commit to helping the Evergreen developers achieve
that goal.

Specific areas of functionality that I will help provide code and
tests for over the next few months include the web staff serials
interface, offline circulation, and general tidying up of loose ends.

However, the primary role of a release manager is much more about
enabling others to contribute to Evergreen — and to get feedback more
quickly. To that end, as release manager I propose to do the following
to improve the state of the pullrequest queue:

[1] Organize at least one event that, for the purposes of this
proposal, I'll call a "feedback fest", loosely based on PostgreSQL's
commitfests.  This would be an exercise during the course of a week
where every single pull request would be reviewed with the goal of
deciding whether it is still applicable and ready for merging, if it
needs additional work (and then identify what that work is), or if it
should not be merged. During this week, I would be actively pinging
developers and testers who are in a good position to review a given
pull request.

The feedback fest would complement Bug Wrangling week with its goal of
getting eyes on _every_ pull request and with a particular focus on
those pull requests that have been languishing the longest.

I would aim to have the feedback fest occur in the middle of the
release cycle; if it is successful, I would then consider calling a
feedback fest prior to feature freeze as a way of better managing the
typical end-of-cycle merge rush.

[2] Organize the creation of a biweekly email update to the
development list that would summarize recent changes in master,
identify bugs and architectural issues that deserve wide attention,
and acknowledge folks for their contributions.

[3] Organize the creation of a development dashboard for the website.
My vision is that it would serve as a way for folks to find things to
do and see who has been active, similar to what
http://dashboard.koha-community.org/ offers, but with an emphasis on
noting progress of the race towards 3.0.

As far as the release schedule is concerned, I would plan on setting
release for September or possibly October 2017, as per usual practice,
but I would first want to have a brief discussion in open-ils-dev to
decide whether we may need to allow ourselves a bit more time
(measured in weeks, not months) to reach our target of full support of
the web staff client in production.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Infrastructure and Added Services Manager
Equinox Open Library Initiative
phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
email:  gmc at equinoxInitiative.org
web:  https://equinoxInitiative.org
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366