Hi, On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: I`m not very keen of such an approach. This adds paperwork to N people (devs) that have already completed a job

, multiplied by M issues (which can be more than 1 each day) done by each person... instead of just 1 person (release manager) in charge of a task that is repeated once every couple of weeks (low frequency).

Plus, the N devs have to use 2 tools to close one single bug.

Why don`t we use Jira's ability to comment on an issue when actually closing it? We could then make a script to automatically round up all such comments for the release process. At least it would be a single application and it would be no major breaking of the flow.

Not sure how things work on Jira, but maybe we could do a very simple Jira extension/plugin that does not allow closing an issue without commenting on the chosen solution or whatever it is that we would want in the release notes.

Thanks, Eduard > > This will have some nice effects: > * xwiki.org will be more up to date than it is now > * it's up to the developer to document what they do (I don't think it's > good to push this to someone else) which is good since they have the most > knowledge (side note: it doesn't mean we don't need a technical writer to > improve on the documentation done by developers but it would be about style > and not about content) > * the release notes will be ready for the release, as we progress and the > burden of writing the release notes will not fall on the shoulders of the > Release Manager (there's no reason it should) > * the whole release process will almost be a joy to do > * with a fully automated release process it means we'll be able to perform > a lot more bugfix releases which is good for our users > > Here's my +1 > > Thanks > -Vincent

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 1:42 PM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: 1. Jira 2. XWiki.org

Please be more clear (preferably with an example) about what you expect for each developer to document on xwiki.org for each issue closed.

For instance, in http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWikiEnterprise32M3I see no link to the list of fixed Jira issues, grouped by issue type. What I see there is a "resume" rather than a full, bullet list (maybe with expandable sections to say 2 words about the stuff done for the particular issue) of things done. While I agree that the resume is more user friendly (for users that have the attention span to read full paragraphs), I also think that we should include (prefferably), or at least link to, the Jira generated issue list. You can`t have people guess that they have to go to Jira and make 3-5 clicks to get the list of fixed issues.

Thanks, Eduard > > Thanks > -Vincent > >> Thanks, >> Eduard >> >>> >>> This will have some nice effects: >>> * xwiki.org will be more up to date than it is now >>> * it's up to the developer to document what they do (I don't think it's >>> good to push this to someone else) which is good since they have the > most >>> knowledge (side note: it doesn't mean we don't need a technical writer > to >>> improve on the documentation done by developers but it would be about > style >>> and not about content) >>> * the release notes will be ready for the release, as we progress and > the >>> burden of writing the release notes will not fall on the shoulders of > the >>> Release Manager (there's no reason it should) >>> * the whole release process will almost be a joy to do >>> * with a fully automated release process it means we'll be able to > perform >>> a lot more bugfix releases which is good for our users >>> >>> Here's my +1 >>> >>> Thanks >>> -Vincent

On 09/28/2011 07:27 AM, Vincent Massol wrote: wrote: - are person couple that they're by a it level I second Vincent, making crappy release notes automatically is easy, just list all the closed issue titles and you're done. But the result won't make any sense at all, and only the core developers would be able to understand what they mean. The release notes are supposed to be clear, simple, and pretty, to attract users that don't care about what version of the reflections library is used internally, or where does aether store its cache, but care that we introduced the message stream feature in 3.0. The problem with the release notes is that they take a lot of time to prepare, and this delays the release too much. First part of the release is usually smooth, and can be done in two hours (most of the time waiting for the permutations of the WYSIWYG editor to compile). Then comes the second part, which involves posting a lot of announcements summarizing the release. This too shouldn't take that much, and a well organized person can do it in half an hour. But it requires that the release notes are ready, and the major features are listed in a few words (Freshmeat for example limits us to 600 chars). And it's hard to go over more than 100 issues one by one and check if they are worth mentioning, trying to summarize the selected ones in a few words ("New implementation of the sheet system", "Named parameters for the event stream", "Office Document Export"), then write some text to describe the feature in more detail, make up some screenshots of the feature in use, etc. Then comes the part about migration and backwards compatibility, and this requires even more detail when going over the closed issues to determine if some obscure issue that you didn't follow and have no idea what it's about is going to cause trouble or not. So, between the first and the second part of the release there's a big break. I usually end up doing the second part one day after the first part, and for 3.2M1 I even screwed it up completely because I didn't know what to put in the release notes. for OK, Vincent was a bit wrong. It's not about *every* issue, but about every issue that is worth documenting. Bugs like http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-6925 are too technical and shouldn't even affect 99.9% of the users, even if they are marked as Critical, since it's only about upgrades to the previous milestone (3.2M2) and only for a certain configuration. OTOH, trivial tasks like http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-6920 should be mentioned in the release notes in the Upgrades section. Big changes like http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-6974 deserve not just a mention in the release notes, but a full documentation page, with lots of screenshots and explanations. If the developer doesn't feel that he's up to the task, which does require more people/communication/design skills, they should ask for help from the marketing department (XWiki SAS) and work together with them. The marketing department alone doesn't know how to use a new feature that's fresh out of development, so the developer has to participate as well, even if only to indicate what should be mentioned. For example: extensions.xwiki.org as a Module type. reviewed to see if it still matches the changes. need to check the doc of the office importer and see if there's any mention of supported version and update it annotation and I modified http://platform.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/DevGuide/WritingComponents as a consequence (I also have some backlogs to do, for ex when I added support for JSR330 I haven't modified http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Component+Module, which is bad and I need to catch up now).

do commenting release http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/ReleaseNotes/ReleaseNotesXWikiEnterprise32M3I particular friendly Jira to A list of 164 issues will hide the real improvements that users care about. it's good to have the full list too. is a link to a filter in JIRA that shows the full list. them on the RN page (although a link might be just enough too). I prefer a link. The full list is going to be too long and too technical to fit nicely in the release notes.

http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10… http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa?selectPageId=10580 http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=10… http://jira.xwiki.org/secure/Dashboard.jspa?selectPageId=10581 Already did, and the link towards them should be placed in the Roadmap and in the ReleaseNotes.

it's writer -- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/ _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 8:28 AM, Vincent Massol <vincent(a)massol.net> wrote: I'm not convinced this is enough. If each of us documents everything we work on on the release notes we'll probably end up with a huge page with mixed technical and non-technical content marking it harder for different types of users to find the relevant information. I think we still need a "filter" (the release manager IMO) to decide what's worth mentioning (leave it or not in the release notes) and in which quantity (maybe a single phrase is enough and not 3 paragraphs). +0, I'm entirely for documenting my own work on the release notes but I don't believe this will "automatically" create the release notes.

Thanks, Marius _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs

So here are the results of this vote: 4 +1, 1 0, no -1 The vote is passed. In order to remind committers to do this systematically I've configured JIRA by adding 2 custom fields to both the default scree and the close screen: * Documentation (text field) - Should contain the link to the doc on xwiki.org. IMPORTANT: If you think there's no need to have any doc for it on xwiki.org, use "N/A" as the value. * Added to Release Notes (radio button) - Set the status

The idea is that when closing issues we do both, i.e. add documentation on xwiki.org and add it to the release notes for the version in development. Of course this should be done discriminatorily (use your judgment to decide). It's also everyone's duty to remind others when they notice that someone has forgotten to do so. Last, when doing Releases the RM should use a JIRA report listing all fixed issues having those fields not set. Example of using those fields: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7832 I'll document this on xwiki.org in the coming hours/days. Thanks -Vincent On Sep 28, 2011, at 7:28 AM, Vincent Massol wrote:

On May 18, 2012, at 5:34 PM, Vincent Massol wrote: I've gone ahead. See: * http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7832 * http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7839 It's cool :) Thanks -Vincent

So here are the results of this vote: 4 +1, 1 0, no -1 The vote is passed. In order to remind committers to do this systematically I've configured JIRA by adding 2 custom fields to both the default scree and the close screen: * Documentation (text field) - Should contain the link to the doc on xwiki.org. IMPORTANT: If you think there's no need to have any doc for it on xwiki.org, use "N/A" as the value. * Added to Release Notes (radio button) - Set the status The idea is that when closing issues we do both, i.e. add documentation on xwiki.org and add it to the release notes for the version in development. Of course this should be done discriminatorily (use your judgment to decide). It's also everyone's duty to remind others when they notice that someone has forgotten to do so. Last, when doing Releases the RM should use a JIRA report listing all fixed issues having those fields not set. Example of using those fields: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-7832 I'll document this on xwiki.org in the coming hours/days.

Thanks -Vincent On Sep 28, 2011, at 7:28 AM, Vincent Massol wrote: