Re: Soft Feature Freeze has started since Nov.1 for dk2-stable201811

[Laszlo Ersek <lersek@redhat.com>]

On 11/07/18 16:38, Leif Lindholm wrote:
> Hi Laszlo,
> 
> Can I inject an alternative interpretation? (feel free to shoot it down)
> 
> On Wed, Nov 07, 2018 at 04:14:01PM +0100, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 11/07/18 02:12, Gao, Liming wrote:
>>> Hi, all
>>
>>> https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/EDK-II-Release-Planning
>>> lists edk2-stable201811 tag planning. Now, we enter into Soft Feature
>>> Freeze phase. In this phase, the feature under review will not be
>>> allowed to be pushed. The patch review can continue without break.
>>> Here is edk2-stable201811 tag planning.
>>
>>> 2018-08-15 Beginning of development
>>> 2018-11-01 Soft Feature Freeze
>>> 2018-11-08 Hard Feature Freeze
>>> 2018-11-15 Release
>>
>> I don't think an announcement should be made like this, one week after
>> the fact. (If I missed the exact dates on yesterday's stewards' call,
>> then I apologize.)
>>
>> If we are making the announcement about the Soft Feature Freeze on
>> 2018-Nov-07, then the Soft Feature Freeze should start no earlier than
>> 2018-Nov-08 or so. Certainly not retro-actively.
>>
>> Perhaps we should push the schedule by one week.
> 
> Do we need to send an announcement for the soft feature freeze?
> 
> I would be quite happy with that one being set in stone(ish) from the
> planning page, and the hard freeze date being the one that needs to be
> announced.
> 
>> I understand that will prevent the stable tag from being dropped
>> *exactly* three months after start of development (2018-Aug-15). I think
>> that should be fine. Nobody forces us to work in cycles of *exactly*
>> three months. (Even if we slipped over to December, that shouldn't be a
>> huge problem; we'd just call the tag "edk2-stable201812".) The workflow
>> itself is work-in-progress.
> 
> Of course, I'm heavily biased since I'm hoping to make a Linaro
> release this month based on the stable tag...
> 
>> I realize that
>> <https://github.com/tianocore/tianocore.github.io/wiki/EDK-II-Release-Planning>
>> has had the dates available all this time. But, the reason we make the
>> announcements in the first place is precisely that people don't keep
>> staring at that page.
>>
>> (
>>
>> For example, I reviewed and pushed 4 patches yesterday (on 2018-Nov-06):
>>
>>   1  e038bde2679b Revert "OvmfPkg/QemuVideoDxe: list "UnalignedIoInternal.h" in the INF file"
>>   2  98856a724c2a Revert "OvmfPkg/QemuVideoDxe: VMWare SVGA device support"
>>   3  438ada5aa5a1 Revert "OvmfPkg/QemuVideoDxe: Helper functions for unaligned port I/O."
>>   4  328409ce8de7 Revert "OvmfPkg: VMWare SVGA display device register definitions"
>>
>> which are the first four patches (out of five) from the following
>> series:
>>
>>   [edk2] [PATCH v2 0/5] OvmfPkg: simply use the Bochs interface for vmsvga
>>
>> These reverts are arguably not bugfixes; they are preparation for
>> re-implementing a feature from scratch (the last patch in that series).
>> Thus, had I known we were already in the Soft Feature Freeze, I wouldn't
>> have pushed them, because the review was not complete before the soft
>> freeze start.
>>
>> But I had just returned from a week (or more) of PTO, there was no
>> announcement on the list yet, and I didn't remember the wiki page.
>>
>> (In the technical sense, the reverts are not disruptive, luckily; they
>> remove code that is dead anyway.)
>>
>> )
>>
>> This is my opinion at least -- I'm ready to be overruled, but I wanted
>> to voice it.
> 
> I don't disagree with anything you say, but my feeling is that we're
> still learning to work with the new process, and we have seen other
> mistakes during this cycle.
> 
> So, I'm happy to consider this post the announcement of the
> hard-freeze with the soft-freeze date being included for context.
> 
> I agree that for the next cycle, separate announcements of soft-freeze
> and hard-freeze would be preferable.
> 
> I too am OK with being overruled :)

OK, let's stick with the current dates as they are.

I do think we should send separate announcements about soft & hard
freezes. The soft freeze is the first time in a cycle when maintainers
have to stop and think about non-technical reasons before they push. I'd
really like to be poked about that.

Thanks
Laszlo