Developers Meeting on Weds, January 5, 2011

Agenda

• First 15-20 minutes: JIRA Catch-Up – starting with issue DS-641
  • Search for all Unresolved Issues (since DS-641)

• Reflections on the 1.7.0 Release Process
  • What went well?
  • What could have been improved?
  • General feedback / suggestions?
  • Has anyone begun/completed their local institution's upgrade to 1.7.0?

• Beginning to Plan Next Releases
  • DSpace 1.7.1 - Needs a Release Coordinator (and tentative schedule)
  • DSpace 1.8.0 - Needs a Timeframe and a Release Coordinator
    • Thoughts on a 1.8.0 Timeframe? 6 months? 9 months (same as 1.6.0->1.7.0)? 12 months?

Meeting Notes

Reflections on 1.7.0 release process, JIRA Review

• Performed a JIRA review – ended with DS-645
• Reflections on 1.7.0 Release process
  • Good:
    • Time-based release seemed to have worked well & we were on time!
  • Problematic / Could be improved:
    • Maven release issues – these are now fixed, and new Maven release process (via Sonatype) is heavily documented in our Release Procedure
    • Documentation processes – We need better processes/procedures for updating the new Wiki-based Docs. There was a quick scramble in the week before 1.7.0 to get all the necessary documentation in place.
    • Sharing Code & Earlier Feedback
      • General consensus that we'd like to (1) share code earlier, (2) get feedback/testing earlier, and (3) preferably get that feedback well before RC1, so that a feature has time to morph/change.
      • No agreement yet on how best to accomplish these goals. Several ideas came to mind (one or more of which could potentially be helpful):
        1. Early "Beta" releases – these would be early releases of DSpace to show off one or more new features and give opportunity for immediate feedback. They'd likely need to happen one or more month(s) before the feature freeze & Release Candidate #1, so that features could change/morph based on initial feedback.
        2. DCVS (e.g. git) – could be used to promote more early code sharing
        3. Agile Release practices – could be used to establish intermediate/early deadlines ("iterations") throughout the year (e.g. separate deadlines for "beta1", "beta2", "rc1", etc.), to get us to try and get code out there earlier, and perhaps even allow for early "beta" releases.
• We ran out of time and didn't get to discussion about timeframes for 1.7.1 or 1.8.0, yet
• We are still looking for a volunteer to act as Release Coordinator for 1.7.1 and/or 1.8.0

Meeting Transcript

• Full IRC Transcript is available at - http://irclogs.duraspace.org/index.php?date=2011-01-05