Per https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/471 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1221920 , it seems we no longer want to require release notes to be present on all media. For simplicity's sake, I suggest we simply remove the media section of the criterion entirely.
We could I suppose require that media include some kind of pointer to the release notes, but this seems difficult in the case of e.g. cloud images.
Anyone have comments, alternative proposals? Thanks!
For the record, the criterion is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ 23_Final_Release_Criteria#Release_notes :
"The final branded release notes must be present on release-blocking images and the appropriately versioned generic release notes must be available in the release repository."
I propose amending it to:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository."
Per https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/471 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1221920 , it seems we no longer want to require release notes to be present on all media. For simplicity's sake, I suggest we simply remove the media section of the criterion entirely.
We could I suppose require that media include some kind of pointer to the release notes, but this seems difficult in the case of e.g. cloud images.
Anyone have comments, alternative proposals? Thanks!
For the record, the criterion is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ 23_Final_Release_Criteria#Release_notes :
"The final branded release notes must be present on release-blocking images and the appropriately versioned generic release notes must be available in the release repository."
I propose amending it to:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository."
Sounds good.
On Mon, 2015-06-15 at 05:17 -0400, Kamil Paral wrote:
Per https://fedorahosted.org/fedora-qa/ticket/471 and https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1221920 , it seems we no longer want to require release notes to be present on all media. For simplicity's sake, I suggest we simply remove the media section of the criterion entirely.
We could I suppose require that media include some kind of pointer to the release notes, but this seems difficult in the case of e.g. cloud images.
Anyone have comments, alternative proposals? Thanks!
For the record, the criterion is https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_ 23_Final_Release_Criteria#Release_notes :
"The final branded release notes must be present on release-blocking images and the appropriately versioned generic release notes must be available in the release repository."
I propose amending it to:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository."
Sounds good.
A mere couple of years late, I have now implemented this change. :) I wonder, though, if on second thought we shouldn't have simplified it so much - perhaps it should be:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository. Release-blocking images must ''either'' not include release notes at all, ''or'' include the final branded release notes."
Thoughts?
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 09:21:43AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository. Release-blocking images must ''either'' not include release notes at all, ''or'' include the final branded release notes."
+1. Release notes outside of the artifact (like, online) are more helpful anyway because they can be updated with late-breaking concerns. I'd be surprised if people even think to look at local release notes.
On Fri, 2017-06-30 at 13:38 -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 09:21:43AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
"The final branded and generic release notes must be present in the release repository. Release-blocking images must ''either'' not include release notes at all, ''or'' include the final branded release notes."
+1. Release notes outside of the artifact (like, online) are more helpful anyway because they can be updated with late-breaking concerns. I'd be surprised if people even think to look at local release notes.
Well, the modification I just applied already removes the requirement for the notes to be on the media. The change I'm proposing now is effectively to add "...but if there ARE release notes on the media, they must be the correct ones", as that's kind of left out at present.
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 10:49:32AM -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
+1. Release notes outside of the artifact (like, online) are more helpful anyway because they can be updated with late-breaking concerns. I'd be surprised if people even think to look at local release notes.
Well, the modification I just applied already removes the requirement for the notes to be on the media. The change I'm proposing now is effectively to add "...but if there ARE release notes on the media, they must be the correct ones", as that's kind of left out at present.
Oh, sorry -- I read too quickly and I'm doing too many things at once. I'd like to consider dropping packaged release notes entirely -- but if we have them, the should be the right version.
I think we should _have_ release notes and that be an overall blocker at the Go/No-Go meeting and tracked by the FPgM, but I don't see much value in having them in the repository. Possibly the existing notes package could be replaced by a simple document pointing to the docs site.
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 02:12:16PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
Oh, sorry -- I read too quickly and I'm doing too many things at once. I'd like to consider dropping packaged release notes entirely -- but if we have them, the should be the right version.
So:
"If branded or generic release notes exist in the release repository, they must up-to-date for the current version. If they are shipped on media, they must match."
Or something like that. Or we could just take the decision to drop packaging them entirely and not bother to mention it.
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 8:49 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 02:12:16PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
Oh, sorry -- I read too quickly and I'm doing too many things at once. I'd like to consider dropping packaged release notes entirely -- but if we have them, the should be the right version.
So:
"If branded or generic release notes exist in the release repository, they must up-to-date for the current version. If they are shipped on media, they must match."
Or something like that. Or we could just take the decision to drop packaging them entirely and not bother to mention it.
It's not my place to decide whether we want to ship packaged release notes or not. But I think the world has changed and almost no one now cares about packaged release notes. The internet is today in your pocket and the notes are likely to be outdated the day we release them. So if I were to decide this, I'd be inclined to remove this criterion completely.
Of course, Adam's or Matthew's proposal does no harm, so +1 to any of those, if you want to go forward with it.
On Tue, 2017-07-04 at 14:23 +0200, Kamil Paral wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 8:49 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 02:12:16PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
Oh, sorry -- I read too quickly and I'm doing too many things at once. I'd like to consider dropping packaged release notes entirely -- but if we have them, the should be the right version.
So:
"If branded or generic release notes exist in the release repository, they must up-to-date for the current version. If they are shipped on media, they must match."
Or something like that. Or we could just take the decision to drop packaging them entirely and not bother to mention it.
It's not my place to decide whether we want to ship packaged release notes or not. But I think the world has changed and almost no one now cares about packaged release notes. The internet is today in your pocket and the notes are likely to be outdated the day we release them. So if I were to decide this, I'd be inclined to remove this criterion completely.
Of course, Adam's or Matthew's proposal does no harm, so +1 to any of those, if you want to go forward with it.
I think a slightly tweaked version of Matt's text is good, as it doesn't require that we have release notes at all, only that if we *do* have them anywhere, they not be outdated.
On Tue, 2017-07-04 at 14:23 +0200, Kamil Paral wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 8:49 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Fri, Jun 30, 2017 at 02:12:16PM -0400, Matthew Miller wrote:
Oh, sorry -- I read too quickly and I'm doing too many things at once. I'd like to consider dropping packaged release notes entirely -- but if we have them, the should be the right version.
So:
"If branded or generic release notes exist in the release repository, they must up-to-date for the current version. If they are shipped on media, they must match."
Or something like that. Or we could just take the decision to drop packaging them entirely and not bother to mention it.
It's not my place to decide whether we want to ship packaged release notes or not. But I think the world has changed and almost no one now cares about packaged release notes. The internet is today in your pocket and the notes are likely to be outdated the day we release them. So if I were to decide this, I'd be inclined to remove this criterion completely.
Of course, Adam's or Matthew's proposal does no harm, so +1 to any of those, if you want to go forward with it.
So this just came up in the blocker review meeting, and I realized I never closed this off with a further change to the criteria :/
So some follow-up thoughts: just removing the criterion entirely leaves the problem of *including outdated release notes* unaddressed. To put this in practical terms, as of right now, the F27 repositories and some F27 media contain release notes for Fedora 25: https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=924590 This is pretty obviously bad. That's why I want us to encode the principle that Matt and I basically agreed - "anything that *DOES* include release notes, has to include up-to-date ones".
Another thought I had, about whether there's any point to including release notes in the repos/media at all: I think there actually *is* quite a strong benefit to this. Consider some person in, say, 2050 who needs, for some reason, to poke around in Fedora 27. I'd suggest it's more likely they'll be able to find the Fedora 27 release notes if they're a part of the release itself than if they were only published on some website. In general, we're quite good at archiving entire 'pieces of software', but we're not necessarily good at archiving the ephemera that accompany them but aren't *part* of them.
I've had this exact thing happen to me, in fact, when I've needed to look at old software or old versions of software from the 90s and early 2000s. It's often the case that you can't really see the website that existed when the software came out, perhaps with a release announcement. You very likely won't be able to find any kind of SCM commit log for the software. But whatever documentation was actually included *in the deliverables of the software itself*, you can read.
Just food for thought, anyway.
For now I think I'll update the criteria with some hybrid of mine and Matt's proposals, basically in line with Matt's intent (don't hard require that the release notes be included anywhere, but require that anywhere they *are* included, they be up to date).
On Thu, 2017-10-26 at 11:25 -0700, Adam Williamson wrote:
For now I think I'll update the criteria with some hybrid of mine and Matt's proposals, basically in line with Matt's intent (don't hard require that the release notes be included anywhere, but require that anywhere they *are* included, they be up to date).
I went ahead and did this, with this wording:
"Any release notes included in the release repositories and/or any release-blocking deliverables must be for the correct release, and approved for release by the documentation team."
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Adam Williamson -
Kamil Paral -
Matthew Miller