'Branch freeze policy' and 'Change deadline' naming change proposal

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2014-09-24 at 14:46 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2014 12:41:17 -0700
> Adam Williamson <adamwill at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> 
> ...snip...
> 
> > AFAICS, the "Branch freeze" kicks in at the point we enable Bodhi on
> > the Branched tree, which is usually a couple of weeks after forking
> > it from Rawhide. For instance, on the F21 schedule -
> > https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/21/Schedule - "Branch Fedora
> > 21 from Rawhide" is listed on 2014-07-08. The first 'Fedora 21
> > updates-testing' email I have is dated 2014-08-28, so I'd say the
> > schedule should have had an extra row, "Branch Freeze", dated
> > 2014-08-28. (The period between branching and enabling Bodhi was
> > unusually long for F21).
> 
> Right. I think thats why the page was marked depreciated. 

Sorry, you think what's why? The 'deprecation' preceded the F21 cycle,
it's not related to the F21 delay.

> We have: 
> 
> Branch from rawhide
> branched release works like rawhide, no bodhi
> at alpha change freeze we enable bodhi and the rest of that page makes
> sense. 

Ah, OK, now I read it again, I guess the problematic part is just the
first line:

"At the Branch Freeze event, all packages are branched from master in
source control. This is to allow the branched tree to stabilize and
enter a bug-fix and polish phase of development."

So recently those are two separate points: the SCM branching is the
actual *branching*, when Branched comes into existence, and the 'freeze'
is when Bodhi gets turned on for the Branch. Well, that's trivial to
fix, we just re-write that line a bit.

> > The name "Branch freeze" seems unfortunate to me, however, as it's not
> > really a freeze, it's more of a light cooling. I'd suggest we remove
> > the 'deprecation' notice, update any details on the page which are no
> > longer correct if anyone can see any, and rename it. Ideas:
> > 
> > Branch stabilization
> > Branch update policy enforcement
> 
> Branch update policy seems fine to me, but really it's just the freeze
> for that milestone. So, how about: "Alpha/Beta/Final freeze" ?

I still find it confusing that we have a freeze that really isn't a
freeze. I know there are different degrees of freeze and etc etc, but it
feels weird to consider the Branched tree to be in any sense 'frozen',
when it clearly isn't - outside of the 'Change Deadlines', it gets a new
package dump more or less every day. That's an odd property for a
'frozen' tree to have, surely?

It just feels to me like the word does not accurately describe the
actual situation, and confuses people.

> > anyone got anything better?
> > 
> > So, the second part of the process which is apparently causing trouble
> > is the "Change Deadlines". These, again, seem to be something of a
> > misnomer, because the Change Deadlines are the *actual* freezes. The
> > problem is exacerbated by the renaming of 'Features' to 'Changes'. If
> > you look again at the F21 schedule you'll see that it lists "Change
> > Proposals Submission Deadline", "Changes Freeze", some "milestone
> > Change Deadlines", and "Accepted Changes 100% Complete" - but those
> > items are referring to two entirely *different* things when they use
> > the word "Change". This is clearly unfortunate.
> > 
> > Again, I'd recommend a renaming here. If we call the "Branch freeze"
> > something else then we can simply call those points the "Alpha
> > Freeze", "Beta Freeze" and "Final Freeze", which are the terms used
> > informally in any case, and would line up with the "freeze exception
> > policy" which determines what stuff can break those freezes.
> 
> Well, do we need to call Branch freeze something else? How about just
> making it clear that it's one of Alpha/Beta/Final? 

I guess I'd still find it confusing to have a "Branch Freeze" and then
Alpha, Beta and Final Freezes, but it'd certainly be an improvement on
the current situation, so if we can get consensus for the renaming of
the 'change deadlines' even without renaming the 'Branch Freeze' that'd
still be worth doing.

Thanks for your thoughts!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net