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Planning Council/November 02 2016
< Planning Council
Revision as of 22:51, 1 November 2016 by David williams.acm.org (Talk | contribs) (/* Neon maintenance)
Contents
Logistics
| Meeting Title: | Planning Council Conference Call |
| Date & Time: | Wednesday, Nov 02, 2016, at 1200 Noon Eastern |
| Dial in: | (See Asterisk service for complete details on SIP, potential new numbers, phone mute commands, etc.)
Phone Numbers: (Check Asterisk/Numbers for more or current phone numbers.)
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Members and Attendees
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Note: "Inactive" refers to Strategic Members or PMCs we have not heard from for a while and have been unable to convince to participate. Those members can become active again at any time. Contact David Williams if questions.
Note: feel free to correct any errors/omissions in above attendance record.
Y = Yes, attended
N = No, did not
R = regrets sent ahead of time
D = delegated
X = not expected
Announcements
- ?
Previous meeting minutes
- Review previous meeting minutes if you'd like. That is, review them before the meeting, but if questions or issues with previous minutes, this would be a good time to bring them up.
Neon maintenance
- Are we done with these?
- - Was "Neon.1 help" ever deployed? See bug 500938.
- Assuming so, now focus needs to be on bug 499411 to make things easier for all releases.
- - [Wayne?] Create New and Noteworthy for Neon.1 (bug 500939)
- Likewise, I assume we can "declare victory", but are "we" (Wayne?) prepared to do this for all releases? Do we "need a documented process"?
- Any issues for Neon.2? Any new projects joining? I assume some will have new features? (But I do not know what they are. Does anyone?)
Oxygen Planning
- There has been a lot of discussion about "giving up release name" and using "date" instead. See bug 493490.
- - Further discussion in the meeting lead to the idea that one thing that is missing is what DO we call the "thing" we are releasing. "Eclipse Neon" seems too vague and definitely sounds like a different thing than "Eclipse Mars" (even if you add "release". Some quick suggestions were "Eclipse IDE - Neon Version" or similar (with dates, probably).
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ACTION ITEM: Doug said he would try to re-ignite the discussion via blog or similar. - - Main point is that we owe the community some response on bug 493490 about what our plan will be.
- -
- During [previous] meeting, it was decided that we can not "solve" for Oxygen, but we can probably make incremental improvement. After that incremental improvement, we may have a better idea of the core problem to fix. As things are now, there is little chance of getting agreement on what the problem is or how to fix it. It is sort of like now the problem is "things are confusing" -- a little too broad to fix all at once. I will comment in bug 493490 that we don't want to abandon the name, but that in general, any place the "code name" is used there needs to be more information, such as version or date or build id (depending on context). Also, I think that "check for update" should give some indication that a "whole new stream" is available -- as the Installer currently does.
- No new discussion in 10/5 meeting.
- A "new business" item that we did not have time to discuss in previous meetings was about the impact of the new levels of IP. Do we, as Planning Council, want to stipulate a participating project must be of "type B"? Or, do we not care? It may depend on "how labelled"? But he will open a bug and/or we will discuss at the next meeting. See and comment in bug 501014.
- Spent a long time discussing this. Mostly asking questions where no one knew the answer. Such as "how labelled?"
- When asked "who wants this" the only answer known was "web projects" such as Orion, where they do not necessarily have detailed, advance knowledge of "which jars, exactly, might be pulled in as they run". It was also believed that perhaps "new projects" wanted this, to get a quick start, but we were not positive about that.
- While the PC is open to further discussion and a different decision, we believe our initial position should be "status quo" -- that is, to say it is required that each project in the Sim. release repository (and EPP packages) be of Type B.
- A few reasons given:
- - Adopters or users may be surprised to get a different legal process than what they are used to. This not only concerns adopters which build stand alone commercial product, but some build features which prereq certain EPP packages are installed, so they direct their customers to install those packages first, and then install their features. Plus, while is it commonly believed "users don't care", many of those users work for corporations or government agencies which may care. For example, the corporation may have a policy that "it is ok to download and install things from Eclipse" (because they know all the code has been "reviewed as Type B") where as the corporations might not say that for "Type A". It is unlikely to get corporations to state what their internal policies are, since they would consider that confidential, so it just seems safest to go with "status quo" -- until we learn otherwise or have good reason to change.
- - Some projects that want to use this new Type A policy, such as Orion, have always been "part of the Simultaneous Release", but not part of the Sim. Release repository. It is only the repository that we are saying it is required for, not the Release, per se.
- - Some obvious things that would change are minds is if half the projects in Sim. Release repo (especially those that have a lot of dependants in the repo) were to say they are always going to be of Type A. So we still need to clarify who plans to use this new process.
- - "How labelled" may make a difference. For example, as far as we know, it is still required that any EPP package that contains "incubating projects" label the whole EPP package as "incubating". Could there be something similar for "Type A" or "Type B" projects?
- A few reasons given:
- Should the ability to update from yearly release to yearly release be a 'requirement'?
- ACTION ITEM from 6/8 meeting. Doug volunteered to "take up" this item to better specify "what does it mean" and "what will it take" to update across major releases. [Doug, it is up to you, but I suggest you form a small team of like 3 people, such as Ian and Dani or, others who know some of the technical issues, to help if they are able and willing.] The goal being just a more specific statement of what it means, and what projects have to do differently for Oxygen. That is, we don't need to reach Nirvana in one release cycle.
- What would this take? Such as,
- features can never be removed but are replaced and transitioned?
- I am assuming for Oxygen we want have a "streamless URL" available (not built in) to make it easier for some to start testing the update from Neon to Oxygen. (See bug 483786)
- Preferences, views, etc. have to "migrate" (if their ID changes)?
- What testing would projects have to do?
- What is the effect on commercial products? That is, will users get sufficient information that they "... can not upgrade without voiding their warranty", so to speak?
- Have we ever had a case where year-to-year updates worked?
- For Neon, it was the change in package layouts. (Hence we backed-off having a "streamless URL".)
- For Luna? it was the change in MacOS layouts
- For Mars? it was the Window executable would not be updated. (Now it can be, as long as it is named "eclipse.exe").
- What would this take? Such as,
- Release Policy vs. Release mechanics. This is being tracked in bug 483322.
- In Neon M6 we changed to have (nearly) all features to be "root features.
- Now what? That is, can we "stop" adding "reference repositories" via feature p2.inf files?
- Can we make an official policy on "off scheduled fixes" (as we are considering for MPC)?
New Business
- Discuss how to deal with Java 9 being moved to July 2017 [Dani]
- -This was a hot topic during the meeting. It was clear we did not want to change our June Release (since, after all, the July date is not exactly guaranteed). Instead we will come out with a quick "July update" in addition to the already planned September update. That was easy enough, but then asking "what does this mean" made it clear that we needed a "Java 9 Coordinator". Dani graciously agreed to take on that role. The July update means -- at least -- that JDT and any related platform component will update (which primarily means to make the "BETA Java 9 Patches" be part of the deliverables instead of patched in).
- -There are two other important aspects to coordinate, though. First: who else has "Java 9 changes" that might be required. It was thought that projects such as Webtools might (such as to "run a server using Java 9", or their "faceted projects" may require a new Java 9 type). Do they plan/desire to be part of the July update? Or will they do something later? Second: does the "July update" imply all the EPP packages (and code in the repository) run on Java 9? If nothing else, projects will need to make sure they use no "internals" which will no longer be available in Java 9. (i.e. run jdeps, etc.) Also, some Eclipse projects (such as e(fx)clipse, may need to make sure the "module definitions" suit their runtime (or, are available, etc.)). Worse, some rules about reflection and class loading may be changing (which might impact a lot of old third party code, some of which does a lot of custom class-loading and lots of reflection or inspection).
- -So, as "Java 9 coordinator" Dani's task will be to 1) Find out which other projects plan to participate in the July update and 2) Educate projects on how to test their code "running" on Java 9. Ideally, as projects test using Java 9, there will be a synergy where projects will "educate each other" on what to look for (perhaps on a wiki, somewhere?). That is, Dani is just to explain the basics and the importance of testing with it, not necessarily to know each and every little thing that might need to be done or changed.
- The remaining "new business" items are from previous meetings. I am not sure they resolved so left them for now.
- Wayne could not make the meeting, but posted a message to our mailing list about concern over some specific projects -- some of which may have to be "removed" from the train. But, in addition, expressed concern over "the process".
- - I agree and commented on a similar issue on cross-project list about two projects who "declared intent", but thought they could join the build at the last minute.
- - I wondered out loud if it was time for more of a Sim. Release process where projects had to "prove they were ready to be in the Sim. Release" instead of us just saying what they needed to do, and then assume they were doing it. We did not discuss at this meeting, but, for example, I mean like a checklist (web app) that has to be updated every milestone? Just an idea.
- A question was raised if people have to "announce" they will be in "Neon.1" if they were in Neon. The answer was "no". [Did not mention it at meeting, but they should announce if they are NOT going to be in Neon.1.]
- - This led to a brief discussion if projects should "rebuild" if their prereqs change. For example, if a security bug is found in an Orbit bundle. A few thought "yes", but seemed the consensus was "there was no way we could force them to" (i.e. can not leave them out, or else their "previous release" would still be there with the bad bundle) and it was probably a fringe enough case we did not need to have a rule about it.
- A question was raised how we can avoid issues such as with Neon where Window Builder was excluded for Neon. They were ready at the very very last minute but had not done any builds or testing for all of the Neon development cycle. Somehow, we should "detect" when projects are not active so we can approach them early to find out if the project is viable if they are testing, etc.
Next Meeting
- November 7, 2016 - Regular First Wednesday Meeting
Reference
- Draft Eclipse Project Branding Requirements (Wayne)