[QGIS-Developer] Feature freeze / exemptions

[Matthias Kuhn]

Hi Paolo

On 09/05/2018 07:52 AM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> Hi Matthias,
>
> Il 09/05/2018 07:13 AM, Matthias Kuhn ha scritto:
>> Feature freeze is coming end of next week with a freeze window of 6
>> weeks. In the past, we have regularly granted freeze exemptions to
>> some features upon request.
>>
>> I think it would be good to know, what we can expect this time to
>> decide on what is granted and then send them over to Loomio for review.
>>
>> Myself, I would like to include Geometry Validation
>> (https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/131). I
>> estimate will require about 1 to maximum 2 more week to get it into a
>> mergeable state, which will still leave us with 4-5 weeks of bugfixing
>> time for this code. One part of it is, it will revisit some of the
>> geometry checker code which is corrected for threading and other
>> issues, so that can already be seen as "bugfixing of existing code"
>> that will land as part of it.
>>
> thanks for this request - this is indeed a gray area that has caused
> some discomfort in the past, so it will be good to have more clear
> guidelines. I think it will be difficult to carve them in stone however;
> some ad hoc evaluation will be necessary.
> Maybe we can ask three questions:
> * should we set a hard limit for freeze (e.g. no exemption in the last X
> weeks), or we can decide anytime based on the merit of the code submitted?
> * whom should decide on this? I personally think core developers should
> have a much heavier weight in this decision than PSC
> * based on which (more or less objective) criteria? This could include
> isolation of code,  i.e. likelihood that it will break other parts,
> importance of the new feature for the majority of users, quality of the
> code, commitment to promptly fix bugs.
> All the best.
>

I think the approach to let voting members decide as we did last time
(https://www.loomio.org/d/38Aiya0q/3-0-soft-freeze-exemptions) works fine.

 * This committee includes several technical members
 * Everyone is free to vote or not, based on self-evaluation of knowledge
 * Particular questions concerning the mentioned gray area can be
formulated on a case-by-case basis

Matthias