Name that Tree!

John Poelstra poelstra at redhat.com
Sun Feb 14 20:37:02 UTC 2010


Jesse Keating said the following on 02/14/2010 08:24 AM Pacific Time:
> On Sun, 2010-02-14 at 07:54 -0800, John Poelstra wrote:
>> I don't see the awkwardness either.
>>
>> I see it adding simplicity which is what we need vs. another name we
>> have to explain to people less involved in the development/release
>> process: what it is, if they should use it, etc.
>>
>> Here is a draft diagram I have explaining what the trees and repos look
>> like.  I don't think we need an additional label or name as the picture
>> illustrates or see what we gain.
>>
>> http://poelstra.fedorapeople.org/paste-bin/nfr-diagram-v2.pdf
>
> How do you easily answer the question "What state is Fedora 13 in right
> now?"
>

To best answer that I'd need a few use cases:
   a) which people are asking this question?
   b) why would it matter to them?
   c) what would they do or not do if they know the state?

As I see it "*Fedora 13* is under development and refinement" between 
the time it branches from "rawhide" (Alpha Freeze) and goes "Gold/GA"

> We can say "It's in rawhide still", we can say "It's released", what we

This to me is too confusing.  It is not rawhide any more because we have 
branched it and created something new and will be doing different things 
to it than we will with rawhide.

> don't have is what it is between those two.  We could potentially use
> "It's in Alpha, it's in Beta, it's in RC" but that's a lot of names for
> the same kind of thing.  "It's branched" kind of works, but not really.
> Maybe this is less of a name for a tree, and more of a name for at
> tree /state/.  The tree is Fedora 13, the /state/ would be<term>.
> Think of every place we used the term "Pending" during our FAD on
> Friday.
>

Now that I understand it better, I have changed my mind :)

When I look at the picture I don't see as much of need for calling it 
"pending" or giving the state of the tree a name.  I've understood our 
release and development processes to flow like a river.

The name of the river once it branches from Rawhide is called "Fedora 
13".  At two points in its meanderings we take a snap shot of the river 
and call it the "Fedora 13 Alpha" and the "Fedora 13 Beta" and release 
it to the masses in a formally packaged and advertised form--the whole 
time the release continues to be developed and refined.

The state of "Fedora 13" is "under development" (which I think is 
obvious to everyone and doesn't need a special name) until it is 
not--Gold/GA date.

Another reason we don't need to name the "state" of the tree is that our 
release milestones and freezes explain the type of development that 
should be happening at that time.  Are you suggesting that naming the 
state of the tree would help people know better what they should or 
should not do?

I'm suggesting giving it "no name" for Fedora 13 and seeing how that 
works out.  If it is problematic we give it a name for Fedora 14 and in 
Fedora 14 we have a much better sense of what the name needs to be. 
Every time we name something or create something new we add complexity 
and the need to explain it.

John



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