Announcing Fedora Activity Day - Fedora Development Cycle 2009

[Josh Boyer]

On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 01:08:15AM +0200, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> It IMHO shows a big and more and more pressing problem in Fedora:
>> Packagers and leadership are not working towards the same direction.
>
>The best solution for that is to change the leadership. :-) So don't vote
>for the same old hats for FESCo and FPB.

Honestly, that is pretty short-sighted.  And Thorsten's statement isn't
entirely accurate either.  Entirely new FESCo and FPB would still be faced with
the same problems we have today.

Let's look at in a bit more detail.

1) I don't recall ever seeing FESCo or FPB state as a committee that they want
fewer packages and updates.  If you have a mailing list post to meeting minutes
that say that, I would be happy to look at it.

2) The people that _have_ advocated for fewer updates have actual limitations
they are facing that would make it desirable.  As Jesse said in his reply
earlier, it takes 8+ hours to mash rawhide now.  It _also_ takes at least 8
hours to do an updates push.

We are facing some real limitations on our turn around time for things at the
moment and they are only going to get worse as we have newer releases that will
get the delta rpms.  At the same time, the same people are getting raked over
the coals for not getting bits out fast enough.

We are working on this from a rel-eng standpoint, but advocating for a bit of
discretion on what should be pushed as an update is not entirely a bad thing.
Personally, I would love it if package maintainers slowed down a bit.  But it's
not an end solution.

So certainly the leadership, defined as FESCo and FPB, is not in conflict with
the contributor's apparent direction.  As far as I can see, they haven't made
a statement either way.  If there is a group that was pushing for something
that ran contrary, it was Rel-Eng.  And given that Jesse and I both just said
we're going to basically stop begging people to slow down on updates, I think
even that group is trying to figure out a way to make things better.  Hell,
that's partly what this FAD is all about.

So, please.  The rhetoric isn't really needed, it's not productive, and it's
just going to stir things up more than necessary.

>> Maybe more target dates where people should "get things into shape"
>> might help to reduce the work for the real test/final releases.
>
>Actually a better strategy is to just schedule the release a few weeks
>earlier than when you actually want to release, then the slips will make it
>hit the real target date very closely. :-)

Except our schedule is public and open.  So whatever we say the date is,
pretend or not, is the date that people will expect and target.

josh