[Libreoffice] minutes of tech steering call ...

Attendees:
        + Michael, Caolan, Kendy, Andreas, Rainer, Timar,
          Tor, Thorsten, Petr, Francois, Norbert, Cedric

* Completed AA's
        + binned dlsym'd fontconfig & non-fontconfig X font code paths (Caolan)
        + avoid: completely junking gnome-vfs backend & startup hooks (Caolan)
                + glib not built internally, and system integration issues with gio
                + RHEL5 & similar vintage don't have gio => gnome-vfs still needed
        + put Rainer in touch with Gerv (Michael)
        + kill Adabas integration dead in master (Francois)
                + disabled for a release, removed next release

* AA still pending:
        + Easy Hacks - completion / fixing (Bjoern)
        + get SmartArt into master as an experimental feature (Thorsten)
        + remove old non-cairo cases (Caolan)
        + bin monochrome & paletised display support with prejudice (Caolan)

* Action Items
* QA feedback (Rainer)
        + short report concerning results of our German QA Meeting last weekend
                + lots of barbeque, fun, and some results
                + bugzilla - leave it at freedesktop.org or not ?
                        + collect goals & required features eg.
                          UNCONFIRMED as default & some timelines
                        + then discuss with freedesktop guys.
                        + concerns: wrt. compromises wrt. other projects
                        + probably: some day, one year out ? migrate away.
                        + decision in six months time.
                        + eg. automated access for bug reporting agent ?
                        + bugzilla setup easy, but upgrade / migration hard.
                + bug hunting ...
                        + try bug-hunting session each month:
                          every 1st Tuesday of a month, EU afternoon - night
                        + wiki page coming to list details
                        + main-page / August banner ads to encourage that
                        + goals: to confirm / triage bugs - no hacking skills
                          necessary
                + help quality
                        + getting out of step with code changes in places
                        + a common feeling, something should be done
AA:                     + contact / discuss with the documentation team to
                          find owners for help bugs (Rainer)
                        + Timar to help out with minor cleanups / removals
                + Extensions repo testing / status (Andreas Mantke)
                        + site is setup / working / published to website list
                        + http://extensions2.libreoffice.org/
                        + branding work improved, not opened for new accounts yet
                        + work on anti-spam account filtering ongoing
                        + populate with existing Free Software extensions
                        + contact extension authors to populate the site
                        + readying to go live.
        + graphical comparison tool
                - update regression tests ongoing

* Cross-compilation update (Tor)
        + what works
                + configure script configures for cross-compilation
                + make compiles native build-time tooling
                + then cross-compilation starts
                + for Windows - approx. 1/2 the way before errors,
                  due to missing pieces in MingW
                        + Jesus getting involved too, and re-appling
                          GSOC 2009 work to the problem from 'build'
                        + problematic msi creation tools, WINE ?
                + for iOS - gets quite far, nothing is linked
                        + Matus' work should help here.
                + for Android - tries to link things, much missing
                  from VCL etc.
                        + hopefully gtk3 / broadway work can help GUI-wise.
                + to PPC Mac from Intel Mac - not tried it much, in
                  theory the easiest target.
        + lots more work to do, but nothing really impossible
        + UI for embedded platforms requires much more work

* Releng bits (Petr)
        + 3.3.3 post-release roundup
                + out last week, no known regressions filed
        + future of 3.3 branch (Rainer)
                + QA meeting tested 3.3.3
                        + less community interest in testing 3.3.3
                        + eagerness to test new features etc.
                        + concern for wasted man-power on 3.3.x
                + what are our goals ?
                        + unify distro maintenance work
                        + keep security up-to-date
                        + key as balance for less stable point-zero versions etc.
AA:             + communicate more minimal QA requirements for each release (Petr)
        + 3.4.1 status / roundup & 3.4.2
                + fdo#38590 charts seem to be leaking meta-file descriptors
                  as they are rendered (amazingly) - nasty.
                        + if in 3.4.0, no regression, release note & move on.
                + otherwise large numbers of bugs fixed, RC2 pre-release builds ready
                + should get announced tomorrow

* Release quality / complaints ... (Cor / Italo / Olivier)
        + presenters not present
        + extend the feature-freeze period for 3.5 ?
                + Norbert: may not help people fix things, just move
                  their work to the next generation.
                + Petr: earlier Beta / Alpha releases ? need to be useable
                  and QA done continuously / before freeze as well.
                + Norbert: 3.4 impacted by merging m106, don't have this
                  issue next time around
                + Caolan: nightly builds are now working, and should help
                  get QA access to the code, and insight into progress
                + Caolan: more automatic regression tests are coming too
                + Rainer: not much penetration in QA team of nightly
                  snapshots, most don't know where to find them.
AA:             + check out nightlies, and encourage others to use (Rainer)
                + Nobert: treat feature-freeze as a release for QA purposes ?
                + Caolan: master perception - should be always ok, ready to ship
                  at any time - not actually broken modulo occasional build issues
        + the future should not be as bad as the 3.4.0 panic.

* Posting TSC minutes on the blog ...
        + Norbert: wording is very terse, not enough context, not suitable
          for mass public consumption.
        + Suggestion: needs to be expanded, and made more comprehensible,
          someone who wants that can/should do it.

* library merging plan (Matus)
        + didn't make it to the call

* gettext - should we use it for everything ?
        + punt until next time ... need: Caolan, Bjoern
        + preliminary thoughts:
                + if no slower - cold / warm start
                + if no bigger - bloating codebase
                + then should use it, otherwise as a fallback.
        + is fallback mode useful for translators ?
                + not so useful for entirely new language
                  because the code needs lots of touching
                + could be useful for established translators who
                  want to check their work quickly

* Norbert's whitespace cleaning C app
AA:     + review it ASAP (Kendy, Tor)
        + is the speed / correctness trade-off right ?
        + speedup is 2x orders of magniture over sed on a 36hr conversion
        + Tor: how fast is 'expand' as an alternative ?

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