Difference between revisions of "PDE/Retrospective"

Revision as of 16:22, 17 June 2009

This page will be used to collect comments about PDE and our development process that were noticed during 3.5. What did we do well? What could be better? What should we do next release?

Coding Best Practices

• If you write new core/model/non-UI code, write tests for it

• Don't release a major change just before a milestone release or even right before an I build

• If you create any kind of UI make sure it has a help topic. Also ensure that you create the help topic(s) at the time the UI is created. DO NOT leave it until the doc pass at the end of the release.

Bugzilla

• If you add someone as a reviewer, add them as a cc

• Only mark a bug with a specific target milestone if you seriously plan on fixing it during that milestone

• If you are unsure about a change or the code you are committing is a major change, add a reviewer and get them to verify it

General Comments

• In 3.5 the target platform changes ended up dropping too late M6/M7 to get proper feedback. We recognized this as a risk beforehand and still went forward and we did get burned for this to some extent. There were too many RC fixes required to get it working.

• Regularly run a profiler (or the like) over any new larger changes to catch performance regressions earlier

• It would be good to always have another pair of eyes (or two) verify all fixes

• We released 3.5 with two bugs marked BLOCKER and one CRITICAL. I haven't really checked if these really are severe defects, but we probably can have communicated better on the actual status of these issues.