[Libreoffice] minutes of tech steering call ...

Present:
        + Michael, Norbert, Kendy, Andras, Bjoern, Thorsten,
          Petr, Fridrich, Cedric, Kohei, Rene, Mitch

* AA done:
        + encourage(d) QA guys to quietly dig at snapshots
                + master now parallel installable (thanks Andras)
                + to get a release build: --enable-release
        + improved Easy Hacks wiki pages (Bjoern)
        + UNO / ABI breaking changes into a set of wiki page for 4.0 (Bjoern + Kohei)

* AA still pending:
        + research when gio came into widespread being (Caolan)
                cf. http://www.gtk.org/download-linux.html
        + wiki's impress 3.4 feature list (Thorsten)
        + the rdb setup stuff is still too cumbersome (Bjoern)
        + get SmartArt into master as an experimental feature (Thorsten)
        + announce new 4.0 wiki page (Bjoern)
        + write list of things that suck for newcomers with taste (Mitch / Christian)

* 3.4 status ... (Petr / Fridrich)
        + good progress fixing bugs
        + much more testing going on
        + many people seem unaware that we are using a time based release schedule
AA:             + write up the rational for that (Michael)

* confusion wrt. 'most annoying bugs' tracker bug (Petr)
        + is it for long standing / annoying bugs ? or for blockers ?
        + instead: it should list all bugs we would like to fix in 3.4.x releases
AA:     + move all 'feature' bugs to new "most annoying for 3.5" bug (Petr)
AA:     + Petr to decide and come up with a static link of key bugs (Petr)

* announcing binfilter as deprecated in 3.4
        + want to warn people in plenty of time
        + officially deprecate it, we drop save support in 3.4
        + be warned - it will die in a new major release soon.

* reviewboard / etc. (Bjoern)
        + would using it make things easier for new developers ?
                + another authentication account required
                + help tracking the patch pipeline, and its status
        + problems with off-line use
        + is a separate patches mailing list good ?
                + no - best to have a big friendly noise (Kendy)
                + happy for an additional tool though (kendy)
        + reviewing patches in bugs can be good (Mitch)
                + but many patches get lost ~forever without poking (Michael)
        + one mailing list best, but interested in reviewboard (Norbert)
        + script could generate reviewboard tasks from ML (Bjoern)
AA:     + Bjoern to investigate and come back with a more concrete proposal

* ESC membership discussion

* single git repo test (Norbert)
        + performance is workable, merging less of an issue
        + next step to setup a test repo
        + necessary for tinderboxes / git bisect
AA:     + come up with a concrete plan (Norbert, Kendy)
                + first-cut - just merge the repos: preserves history
                + makes history odd, but preserves ownership nicely
                + do we migrate 3.3 / 3.4 ? (probably not)
                + new repo names needed.
        + plan to pull trigger mid 3.5 devel. cycle.

* 3.5 release ...
        + nudging closer to distribution cycles / alignment ?
                + when should we go for maximum effect ?
        + with less table point-zero releases, distros will
          use other versions
        + if point zero releases are less stable, distros will
          use other versions
        + should the office suite be in sync. with the desktop ?
AA:     + generate a preferred date for a .2 release (Petr, Bjoern, Caolan)
                + we review these; and build a six monthly schedule around it

-- 
 michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot