Dear Wikitech-l
REL1_24 was branched and announced ahead of schedule[0].
Our schedule[1] clearly states that we will announce a branch one week before we make one in order to allow developers to put any necessary work into the branch and keep backports to a minimum.
The current release is planned for 2014-11-26[2]. According to our schedule, the actual REL1_24 branch should be made on 2014-10-22.
Please excuse the error and do not deprecate anything while we make the necessary corrections. Unless there is a good reason to keep the branch, we will revert the current REL1_24 branch on Monday evening.
Finally, while we are very happy to have help with the release work, we do ask that you coordinate with us to ensure a controlled process free of disruption.
Signed,
Mark and Markus
[0] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/project:mediawiki/core+branch:REL1_24,n,z) [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_process#Release_proce... [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
On 21/09/14 20:42, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
Dear Wikitech-l
REL1_24 was branched and announced ahead of schedule[0].
Our schedule[1] clearly states that we will announce a branch one week before we make one in order to allow developers to put any necessary work into the branch and keep backports to a minimum.
The current release is planned for 2014-11-26[2]. According to our schedule, the actual REL1_24 branch should be made on 2014-10-22.
Please excuse the error and do not deprecate anything while we make the necessary corrections. Unless there is a good reason to keep the branch, we will revert the current REL1_24 branch on Monday evening.
Finally, while we are very happy to have help with the release work, we do ask that you coordinate with us to ensure a controlled process free of disruption.
Signed,
Mark and Markus
[0] https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/project:mediawiki/core+branch:REL1_24,n,z) [1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_process#Release_proce... [2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
Why is this ahead of schedule? Two months before release seems pretty reasonable to me; this way folks will actually have time to test things and get everything in and make the release stable from the start, with allowance for any other unexpected issues that may arise. You don't want to rush this stuff, especially when balancing with breaking changes in the next release.
Also, 1.24 has already had wmf22 branched. Shouldn't this mean master should be going onto 1.25 now anyway?
-I
Hi Isarra,
Why is this ahead of schedule? Two months before release seems pretty reasonable to me; You don't want to rush this stuff, especially when balancing with breaking changes in the next release.
It's ahead of the planned release schedule [1] by a few weeks. The real issues is, though, that the branching was not announced a week beforehand, as planned. As you point out, the whole tarball release of a major version should not be done in a rush. This also implies giving developers, especially when it comes to extensions, some time ahead to include their work (in progress) into the branch without a lot of backporting.
Also, 1.24 has already had wmf22 branched. Shouldn't this mean master should be going onto 1.25 now anyway?
IMHO, the issue is that we have no clear responsibilities here. The Foundation sets the date for switching to wmf1.2x+1. Probably this should this be the trigger for the 6 week tarball release process. On the other hand, we have a monthly tarball release cycle and announced dates for releases which a lot of non-WMF users refer to. So we need to coordinate this. Mind you, I do not want to totally stick to the 6 week process we have lined out, there is of course flexibility. But it needs some coordination before the branching is acually made. I assume it is within the responsibilities of WikiReleaseTeam to make sure this coordination takes place (in the future). Personally, I also think the WikiReleaseTeam should do the acutal branching and communication about this.
Let me be clear about one thing: this is a matter of unclear responsibilites. I'm not blaming anyone personally for what they did. Let's clarify the process (maybe here on this list) and make _better_ mistakes tomorrow :)
Best, Marks
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 3:41 PM, Markus Glaser glaser@hallowelt.biz wrote:
Let me be clear about one thing: this is a matter of unclear responsibilites. I'm not blaming anyone personally for what they did. Let's clarify the process (maybe here on this list) and make _better_ mistakes tomorrow :)
Yup, agreed. In my opinion, the time to branch should be up to you (as the tarball publishers), and we (WMF) number our deployment branches (1.2?wmf??) to make sense with that. Anything dependent on the timing of the tarball release should be coordinated with you all.
There's not a great reason to assume that 1.24wmf22 is automatically the last in the 1.24 series. Sure, 1.23wmf22 was the last in the 1.23 series, but we had 1.22wmf24, and back when we were on a two week cycle, we had 1.21wmf12 ( x 2 = wmf24), and 1.20wmf12. If you go off of blind mathematical calculation based on weekly WMF deployments and two releases a year, that would imply we can have 1.24wmf26. However, given that we're not yet that predictable (we occassionally don't deploy some weeks), we shouldn't automatically peg the tarball releases to a specific wmfXX number.
It would be good, however, to have this timeline published somewhere sooner so that everyone is aware of the target. While we're thinking of it, can we just publish the 1.25 timeline now (somewhere obvious to everyone involved) so that there's no confusion come April/May/June? The obvious place for both the 1.24 timeline and the 1.25 timeline would seem to me to be [[MediaWiki 1.24/Roadmap]] and [[MediaWiki 1.24/Roadmap]] respectively.
Rob
On 21/09/14 22:41, Markus Glaser wrote:
Hi Isarra,
Why is this ahead of schedule? Two months before release seems pretty reasonable to me; ... You don't want to rush this stuff, especially when balancing with breaking changes in the next release.
It's ahead of the planned release schedule [1] by a few weeks. The real issues is, though, that the branching was not announced a week beforehand, as planned. As you point out, the whole tarball release of a major version should not be done in a rush. This also implies giving developers, especially when it comes to extensions, some time ahead to include their work (in progress) into the branch without a lot of backporting.
That's not what I asked. Ignoring for the moment that the schedule only appeared after the 1.24 branch was made, why was that what was planned?
Also, 1.24 has already had wmf22 branched. Shouldn't this mean master should be going onto 1.25 now anyway?
IMHO, the issue is that we have no clear responsibilities here. The Foundation sets the date for switching to wmf1.2x+1. Probably this should this be the trigger for the 6 week tarball release process. On the other hand, we have a monthly tarball release cycle and announced dates for releases which a lot of non-WMF users refer to. So we need to coordinate this. Mind you, I do not want to totally stick to the 6 week process we have lined out, there is of course flexibility. But it needs some coordination before the branching is acually made. I assume it is within the responsibilities of WikiReleaseTeam to make sure this coordination takes place (in the future). Personally, I also think the WikiReleaseTeam should do the acutal branching and communication about this.
Let me be clear about one thing: this is a matter of unclear responsibilites. I'm not blaming anyone personally for what they did. Let's clarify the process (maybe here on this list) and make _better_ mistakes tomorrow :)
Best, Marks
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
Is it not your responsibility to coordinate this with the WMF, and make sure ahead of time that all the dates line up? Why wasn't this done?
Given that they run on their own schedule, and that most developers also do things on their own time, I'm not sure how viable a 'montly release cycle' actually is, either. Updates should go out when they're ready, not on specified dates, and this doesn't just apply to security fixes (though they are particularly important), but the main releases too. We just all need to know ahead of time what the status of these is so we can coordinate our own patches, updates, etc accordingly.
-I
Hi,
On 9/21/14, 1:42 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
Dear Wikitech-l
REL1_24 was branched and announced ahead of schedule[0].
Our schedule[1] clearly states that we will announce a branch one week before we make one in order to allow developers to put any necessary work into the branch and keep backports to a minimum.
Given that your schedule was only posted earlier today (https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=WikiReleaseTeam%2FRelease_timeline&diff=1177036&oldid=1135771), I'm not sure how you expected anyone else to know about it. Normally we switch over to the next alpha branch after the wmf22 branch is created.
The current release is planned for 2014-11-26[2]. According to our schedule, the actual REL1_24 branch should be made on 2014-10-22.
This doesn't make much sense to me. Next week 1.25wmf1 is going to be branched, meaning that master should be on "1.25alpha" already. Waiting until late October to branch means that won't happen. The bump to 1.24 (https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/125735/), it was done right after 1.23wmf22 was branched, so the same basic process was followed here give or take a day.
-- Legoktm
On 21 September 2014 20:08, Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
On 9/21/14, 1:42 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
Dear Wikitech-l
REL1_24 was branched and announced ahead of schedule[0].
Our schedule[1] clearly states that we will announce a branch one week before we make one in order to allow developers to put any necessary work into the branch and keep backports to a minimum.
Given that your schedule was only posted earlier today (< https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=WikiReleaseTeam%2FRelease_timeli...
),
I'm not sure how you expected anyone else to know about it. Normally we switch over to the next alpha branch after the wmf22 branch is created.
Indeed. If we follow the newly-proposed timeline on that page, 1.24 would have wmf23, wmf24 and wmf25 branches before being again branched?
It would help a great deal if you're choosing to alter the process that you change expectations by communicating them a little earlier; as it is I'll have to go and apologise to everyone who I informed that 1.24wmf22 would be the last cut, and instead explain that the plans were changed.
J.
In deference to the concerns raised by James Forrester, Markus and I have decided not to back out the REL1_24 branch.
Less than 80 hours have passed since the branch was made, so there hasn't been time to make any major technical changes in the code base. That leaves the social concerns that James raises. We respect him and his work as product manager for editing and don't want to make him suffer as the result of this snafu.
That said, I need to clarify some things about the schedule for releases.
For about a year now, we've used the schedule: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
Markus did filled in the dates as a result of this situation, but we had already agreed on a release date, and, as a result, a branch point.
(Markus and I are not the only people who have edited the page, so it wasn't unknown. Still, we could have done a much better job of publicizing it. Thankfully, this incident has led to it being publicized.)
In this vein, we'd like to announce the date of the 1.25 release now and its respective branch point.
1.25 is scheduled for release on Wednesday, May 27th, 2015. Using the formula on that page (6 weeks prior to the release date), the branch date for REL1_25 will be April 15th, 2015 and this will be announced (again) on April 8th so that everyone will have a week's notice to merge anything that is necessary for 1.25.
Thanks, and I hope this clarifies any misunderstanding.
Mark.
On 22 September 2014 13:10, Mark A. Hershberger mah@nichework.com wrote:
In deference to the concerns raised by James Forrester, Markus and I have decided not to back out the REL1_24 branch.
Less than 80 hours have passed since the branch was made, so there hasn't been time to make any major technical changes in the code base. That leaves the social concerns that James raises. We respect him and his work as product manager for editing and don't want to make him suffer as the result of this snafu.
That said, I need to clarify some things about the schedule for releases.
For about a year now, we've used the schedule: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/WikiReleaseTeam/Release_timeline
Markus did filled in the dates as a result of this situation, but we had already agreed on a release date, and, as a result, a branch point.
(Markus and I are not the only people who have edited the page, so it wasn't unknown. Still, we could have done a much better job of publicizing it. Thankfully, this incident has led to it being publicized.)
In this vein, we'd like to announce the date of the 1.25 release now and its respective branch point.
1.25 is scheduled for release on Wednesday, May 27th, 2015. Using the formula on that page (6 weeks prior to the release date), the branch date for REL1_25 will be April 15th, 2015 and this will be announced (again) on April 8th so that everyone will have a week's notice to merge anything that is necessary for 1.25.
Thanks, and I hope this clarifies any misunderstanding.
Mark and Markus,
Thank you very much; sorry for putting you in an awkward position.
Yours,
On 9/22/14 1:10 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
In deference to the concerns raised by James Forrester, Markus and I have decided not to back out the REL1_24 branch.
Will you be creating the REL1_24 branches for extensions and skins, or would you like me to do that?
-- Legoktm
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 9/22/14 1:10 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
In deference to the concerns raised by James Forrester, Markus and I have decided not to back out the REL1_24 branch.
Will you be creating the REL1_24 branches for extensions and skins, or would you like me to do that?
You can do it if you like. There is a script at https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Ftools%2Frelease/HEAD/make-release... that will help with this.
Mark.
mah@nichework.com (Mark A. Hershberger) writes:
Legoktm legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com writes:
On 9/22/14 1:10 PM, Mark A. Hershberger wrote:
In deference to the concerns raised by James Forrester, Markus and I have decided not to back out the REL1_24 branch.
Will you be creating the REL1_24 branches for extensions and skins, or would you like me to do that?
You can do it if you like. There is a script at https://git.wikimedia.org/blob/mediawiki%2Ftools%2Frelease/HEAD/make-release... that will help with this.
Note that you'll need to modify this to handled the new skins repository.
Mark.
How are you going to ensure that none of the changes that were already merged on REL1_24 branch will be lost, and that none of the changes merged on master that weren't meant for 1.24 will be included, and that all of the changes merged on master will still be kept on master after the new branch point?
I don't think trying to do this is worth the hassle for you, the inevitable awful mess it will produce in Gerrit, and the annoyance for everyone else. The two release calendars weren't synchronised and this isn't the best situation, but I suggest we roll with it nevertheless. On the plus side, now we'll have a lot more time to backport necessary changes to REL1_24.
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