Release criteria proposal: explicit requirements for keyboard layouts

[Adam Williamson]

Hey, folks. So I'm currently looking through f20 blocker review logs to
try and catch cases where the criteria clearly weren't as clear as they
could be.

One that showed up quickly is something of a greatest hit: keyboard
layout problems. It's quite often the case that keyboard layout
selection gets broken at some level. The key stages to consider are
decryption of encrypted storage devices (which happens early in boot),
login time, and after login. We had a long discussion about such a bug
in the second F20 blocker review meeting:

http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-blocker-review/2013-08-28/f20alpha-blocker-review-2.2013-08-28-16.01.log.html

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=994180 , "Boot-time LUKS
passphrase input *always* defaults to en-us"

We currently 'cover' this in the sense that we have Alpha requirements
that decryption and login should work, and a note in the preamble that
says:

"There may be times where a requirement is unmet only in a particular
configuration, such as with some keyboard layouts but not others, or if
a particular character is used in a username, password or passphrase. In
such cases, the release team should use their judgement and refer to
precedent to determine whether or not the issue should be considered to
block the release. They should consider the number of users likely to be
affected by the issue, the severity of the case when the issue is
encountered, and the ease or otherwise with which the issue can be
avoided by both informed and uninformed users."

That's a generic explanation of the 'conditional blocker' process, but
we do explicitly list 'keyboard layouts' as one of the examples. Still,
I think our experience indicates that this kind of problem comes up
sufficiently often that we'd really benefit from explicit coverage.

So, I'm proposing we add a section to
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_20_Final_Release_Criteria#Post-install_requirements which states that at decryption and login stages, the systemwide keyboard layout must be used, and post-login, the systemwide layout must be used if no per-user configuration is specified; if a user-specific layout configuration for a given desktop exists, it must be used for that user/desktop combination.

=== Keyboard layout configuration ===

If a particular keyboard layout has been configured for the system, that
keyboard layout must be used:

* When unlocking encrypted storage volumes during boot
* When logging in at a console
* When logging in via the default login manager for a release-blocking
desktop
* After logging in to a release-blocking desktop, if the user account
does not have its own keyboard layout configuration for that desktop (if
there is such a user/desktop-specific configuration, it must be used
when that user logs in to that desktop)

I think Final is appropriate for this. It's acceptable for it to be
broken for an Alpha or a Beta, I think, especially given that I think
we're generally agreed that we may currently be setting too high a
standard at Alpha and Beta and we should err on the side of trimming
those requirements rather than adding more.

Comments, suggestions, objections, improvements? Thanks!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net