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The Release

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Team

The release coordinator team is elected selected from any volunteers for from the position. Usually there is only one volunteer! Each Release Coordnator will have their own 'style', so it is likely that each release will be coordinated in a slightly different way. Use your own preferred style, following the outline below:Committer Group.  Each release team selects a "team lead", but all members of the release team are expected to help with release coordination duties.

DSpace development

DSpace is a community driven open source project. This means that the requirements for new features are driven by the community, and the actual code developments are contributed by the community. Therefore much of the role of the release coordinator is based around working closely with the community to ensure that requirements are documented, and code is contributed.

What is a Release

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Team expected to do or not do?

Generally speaking, a Release Coordinator does the following:the release team helps coordinate the next release of DSpace.  This may include (not an exhaustive list):

• Helping Helps keep code development around a release organized (DSpace JIRA is a great resource for keeping organized)
  • e.g. Ensures Ensure each new feature or bug fix has a developer assigned to it
  • e.g. If a developer needs help/feedback, helps help locate that help/feedback from the Committers or the Communitycommunity
• Helps Helping communicate information about the Release to DSpace Community
• Reports Reporting on release status updates during DSpace Developer Meetings
• Asks Asking for additional help/support when a release requires it

A The Release Coordinator Team is NOT expected to:

• Make all decisions him/herself themselvs (FALSE: The Release Coordinator Team should use the Committers Group to help make all decisions. But, the Release Coordinator Team can veto an idea, or ask for a re-vote, if it doesn't seem plausible for the release.)
• Be an expert on every feature in the release (FALSE: The Release Coordinator Team should just be aware of who the feature experts are, and be able to delegate questions to them as necessary)
• Do everything himself or herself themselves (FALSE: The Release Coordinator Team should delegate tasks to the Committer's Committers Group or others as necessary. In addition, DuraSpace provides additional support when a Release Coordinator has other work or personal priorities that come upavailable on request.)

Example Tasks

Listed below are example tasks that a Release Coordinator Team may need to undertake (or delegate to someone else to handle). Some of the tasks the release coordinator may have to undertake aremay include:

• Determine, along with the development community, whether a major or minor release is required. Minor releases include bug fixes and minor, non-db-schema-altering changes; mostly minor releases can be installed by replacing the DSpace code. Major releases include major functional enhancements, configuration changes and db schema alterations.

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• Announce to dspace-devel, dspace-tech and dspace-general lists the date of the feature freeze for the coming release, requesting patches and bug fixes

• The job of the release coordinator team is not to test all the patches and fix all the bugs, but to help others in doing so. Advise the list of any important events in development and liaise with patch authors to ensure smooth development.

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• Following the testathon, the release may be ready, or it may have significant bugs, in which case bug fixing is required, and another release candidate. Work with the community to find volunteers to fix bugs.

• The release coordinator team is responsible for building the release package and uploading it to SourceForge. See Release Procedure for information on how to do this. At the same time as releasing a file the coordinator The release team should also email dspace-devel, dspace-tech and dspace-general to announce the release and add a news item to the SF project page. See other news items for examples of the format of such announcements.

Things to Do at the Start of a Release Cycle

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