Re: [Libreoffice] 3.5 release from QA to point-zero

Hi Kohei,

To start with your last remark ( "I'm very very confused. "):

I do not want you guys to stop improving code, change thing for the 
better etc. On the contrary: I do applaud it.
I know that you are aware of the risks of the necessary changes and do 
all that is reasonable to avoid it.
I do not criticize the way you work either (I've no idea on what bases I 
could do that, given the different skills-set)
(And maybe superfluous: there is no sarcasm intended in these mails, and 
my arguments, words.)

Kohei Yoshida wrote (13-09-11 01:02)
> On Tue, 2011-09-13 at 00:23 +0200, Cor Nouws wrote:
>
> > >                 + always a trade-off between quality, community fun,
> > >                   pace of development (Michael)
> >
> >     No real argument. I am more interested in the question: do we want
> >     avoid another 3.4-style release?
>
> So, our memory is getting rustier about how the 3.4.0 release went.
> Could you refresh our memory as to what exactly were the issues
> concerning the 3.4.0 release?  I assume here that by "3.4-style release"
> you mean the actual 3.4.0 release.

PR wise, it was a bad situation. Just to bad overall quality.
And that is something that I (and many others) are sadly confronted with 
directly.

> It's much easier to discuss specific issues than vague "let's avoid the
> 3.4-style release" style of argument.

Many/most of the issues have been solved in the mean time of course.
The thing is, that we should avoid another minor release with the 
quality as 3.4.0.
You and I and others here can not the point-zero principle. That does 
not mean that a bad point zero release will bring bad PR.

> > > - number and severity of changes on code
> > > how many difficult/basic stuff are touched in these months?
> > > We know that when so much is changed, for sure many nasty hidden
> > > older bugs will surface..
> >
> >     I have deep respect for the work of Kohei, Eike and Marcus.
> >     But they do change a whole lot of stuff these days, weeks, months.
> >     Is it strange that we have to expect quite some unexpected
> >     side effects?
>
> So,  you want us to stop writing code?
>
> On a serious note, any developers worth his/her money are aware that
> making changes may introduce side effects.  There is no way to avoid it.
> What we do is that, given that possibility, balance out the necessary
> code change *and* avoiding regressions, and do our due diligence to test
> our code.  Even with that, some things break in some unknown corner case
> scenarios.  So we rely on testers to weed out those weird corner cases
> that we had not anticipated.  To me that's just the normal course of
> business.  We also help each other out by code review, and also fix each
> other's bugs.

All great - see my introduction in this mail.

> Plus, we are not even hitting the code freeze (Dec 5), so I don't think
> it's fair to start blaming us for the necessary code changes, unless you
> want this project to stagnate to a stand-still way before hitting the
> code freeze.

Again: I don't blame you for anything.
I want to avoid a situation that is as bad with 3.4 release.
Some essential things are better in control now. Some are not. And how 
does the overall picture for 3.5 release look.
That is what I attempted with my post from 2011-09-06, 20:41 UTC: 
gathering items that have influence on the situation.
Maybe that was wrong, and should I started creating a list of actual 
problems?

> >     We cannot on the one side complain that the old code is quite filled
> >     with oddities, mistakes, redundancies etc etc, and on the other
> >     hand do light on the risk of side effect with large code changes
>
> Oh come on.  Save us the lecture there.  We are all aware of the risks
> of large code changes.  So we are limiting that until we hit a code
> freeze.  Isn't that reasonable?
>
> I'm very very confused.

Hope I have made my concerns a bit more clear now.

But, considering your reply: must I conclude that you would not be happy 
with a possible decision on a changed freeze made at the LibreOffice 
conference?

Kind regards,
Cor


--
 - Cor
 - http://nl.libreoffice.org