The Morning After

Rahul Sundaram sundaram at fedoraproject.org
Wed Mar 22 20:15:38 UTC 2006


Patrick Barnes wrote:

>To start off, congratulations are in order for everyone who was involved in 
>bringing Fedora Core 5 to fruition.  Fedora Core 5 is the most outstanding 
>Fedora Core release to date, and we've seen a lot of progress since Fedora 
>Core 4.  Thank you and congratulations to everyone!
>
>Overall, I think the Fedora Core 5 release was a great success.  We had a few 
>minor glitches, as will always happen on release day, but things really came 
>together to deliver this awesome release in an awesome way.
>
>While the excitement is still strong, let's look back over the events leading 
>up to and immediately following the release, and see what we can do to make 
>things better both for the lifetime of this release and for future releases.
>
>Over the weekend, we saw quite a few leaked ISOs flying around.  This is to be 
>expected, but we need to try to minimize this to avoid potential problems.  
>We also saw a large number of users take advantage of BitTorrent, which 
>greatly reduced demand on the main servers, but, as always, people are always 
>looking for more bandwidth. 
>
Documentation on downloads, checking ISO images and using Bittorrent 
should be better. The fact that we can do a minimal installation with a 
single CD,  a desktop class installation in 2 CD's or a network 
installation with boot.iso image is far from clear to everyone involved. 
It has been offered for years and people continue to request it as a new 
feature not being aware that it exists already in just about every 
release. Kickstart should be much better advertised.

> We've got plans in the works that will help, but 
>there's always room for more improvement.  It is great that there is so much 
>interest, so how can we best support that interest without failing our 
>release goals?
>
>A lot of switches and buttons had to be operated manually for this release.  
>We could almost certainly add automation and scheduling, and we could 
>streamline processes to make life easier on ourselves.
>
>  
>
The build system needs to be exploited to provide more information. The 
bugs closed and new features implemented  between every release 
including the test releases with bugzilla references. Refer to 
http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/ for what I have in mind. The 
documentation specified in the RPM specs on every package should be 
available in the documentation page in revisions. This will make it 
easier to point to a particular man page or refer to it.

>We had to update a lot of information on both fedora.redhat.com and 
>fedoraproject.org.  We have some unnecessary duplication, and there are 
>places where we can get things working a little more smoothly.  Jesse, and 
>anyone else working on these things, what did you notice?  How can we improve 
>the process?
>  
>
High time we got rid of fedora.redhat.com and launch fedoraproject.org 
with a new design.

>It took a fair chunk of the day to get the latest release notes up on the 
>website and working properly. 
>
The release announcement should have had a link to the known issues page 
- http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/FC5Common and publishing the 
release notes has always been in the last minute. We should do this 
earlier when we start pushing ISO images to the mirror. The release 
process and tasks being done should be  publicly documentation to make 
the information more transparent and possibly delegate tasks within the 
community as much as possible. Other development processes such as 
release targets, blockers and other tasks within the development process 
of Fedora should be available to everyone interested.

> Surely, we can automate some of this.  I know 
>a lot of work is going into getting the build tools working better, but what 
>else can we do to simplify this for a prompt release reaction?
>
>There were a few other technical errors or delays, such as those that prompted 
>symlinking torrent URLs and the update to the release announcement, the lack 
>of the planned instructions for CD-burning in the distribution directories, 
>and a few known flaws in the final release.  These kinds of things are bound 
>to happen, especially when internal issues arise just before the release, but 
>that's no reason to ignore them.  What did we miss, and how can we make sure 
>we get it right next time?
>
>Finally, there has been a lot of buzz leading up to and following the release.  
>We saw a refreshing surge even before the release hit.  That's great, but the 
>buzz could still be bigger.  We saw a few reviews of the test releases, and 
>many sites have published new information in the last 24 hours, but how can 
>we generate more of this?  Did anybody notice particular areas that were 
>undersold?
>  
>
I should have done the tour better - 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Tours/FedoraCore5. Next time we should do 
this starting from the first test releases. Hopefully we get more 
testers and feedback that way too. The front page of fedora.redhat.com 
was too boring and pretty much no changes while we should have been 
shouting about the new release from the roof top.

>Now is the time for radical thoughts and ideas that can shape what we do to 
>support Fedora Core 5 and prepare for Fedora Core 6.  Let's hear them!
>
>  
>
Thats pretty much it for now. We have a roadmap page at 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RoadMap.


-- 
Rahul 






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