Anaconda is totally trashing the F18 schedule (was Re: f18: how to install into a LVM partitions (or RAID))

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Stephen John Smoogen <smooge at gmail.com> said:
> This only seems to work for teams or parts that can split their
> resources over doing 4 releases at one time (really old, current
> release, new release fixes, next release coding). With stuff like
> anaconda where the code usually has to get its stuff fixed after
> everything else has landed.. that makes it a very hard to ever look at
> next release coding unless it is done in a jarring way.

That's true in general, but not really for anaconda.  Since there are no
official update images, once a release is out the door, the anaconda
team should basically be done with it (especially when there's not much
point in bug-fixing code that isn't going to ever be released again).

I think part of the problem was that there was an accepted feature for
newUI that just punted a bunch of things (such as upgrades and text
mode) to F19, and then later (like at Alpha time) people said "wait, we
can't do that".  IIRC the upgrade code had not been written at Alpha (at
least per the original schedule); even though upgrades are not part of
the Alpha test matrix, that should have failed as not being at or near
feature complete.

A lot more thought should have gone into the feature before it was
accepted.  The initial code needed to be ready (or very close) at F17
branch so it could have landed in rawhide (with install images being
built regularly for testing).  The list of required functionality for
F18 should have been reviewed better, at which point it should have been
recognized that it wasn't all going to happen for the original F18
schedule.  At that point, the schedule should have been adjusted
significantly (maybe another 9 month cycle instead of 6 month), which
would have let _all_ of Fedora benefit (with proper planning).

IMHO at this point, the schedule should be adjusted for another month
(at least, maybe two), and drop the Beta freeze until the re-scheduled
time hits.  I'm afraid that week-at-a-time slips (with everything else
frozen) are going to lead to rushed code, and that often leads to
significant problems down the road (bugs as well as poor design
choices).

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.