[QGIS-Developer] Feature freeze / exemptions

Fri Sep 7 01:06:41 PDT 2018

Hi Régis,

I see the point, thanks for raising this. The source of the freeze
exemption is that last-minute pull requests were merged without much
review just to get it in. In the end, this often resulted in worse code
quality because no in-depth review had been done and only issues that
surfaced and were connected to a given PR would actually be fixed. This
mostly affects the small number of developers who do the job of
reviewing pull requests, just before the release they have the double
burden of finalizing their own pull requests and reviewing other pull
requests which tend to land also just a couple of days/hours before
freeze. The exemption on request for a selection of PRs with good
reasoning is an approach to tackle this dilemma, which so far (to my
knowledge) was not under a broader discussion which I interpreted as
silent agreement.

Alternatives to this approach exist, so if this is deemed a problem and
different approaches are on the table, I would propose to raise a motion
after the release of 3.4 so we can review and discuss them with enough
time for everyone to raise their voice. Does that work for you?

Best regards
Matthias

On 09/06/2018 07:30 PM, Régis Haubourg wrote:
> Well, my point is that in exceptional cases, that could be of course
> discussed, but not at every release. 
> Régis
>
> Le jeu. 6 sept. 2018 à 18:38, Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it
> <mailto:cavallini at faunalia.it>> a écrit :
>
>     Hi Regis,
>     so in short your proposal is no exemption?
>     All the best.
>
>     Il 6 settembre 2018 18:21:29 CEST, "Régis Haubourg"
>     <regis.haubourg at gmail.com <mailto:regis.haubourg at gmail.com>> ha
>     scritto:
>
>         Hi all,
>         maybe from a voter point of view, this is uncomfortable to
>         vote for last minute exemptions, as this does not have such
>         sense from a democratic perspective.
>         Voting is essential on strategic issues, but voting on "do you
>         want this now, or within 4 months" may not appear so important
>         - except if you funded the feature yourself.
>
>         As a user, I'd really want the two mentioned features for the
>         next LTR, I've wanted them for so long. But in the other hand,
>         I think we should really not end into a systematic feature
>         freeze exemption process.
>
>         I know QGIS is a do-ocraty, and we owe so much to our top
>         contributors that we can't refuse them anything, hum...
>         professionally speaking I mean:-)
>
>         However having work still going on while in feature freeze
>         does not help in dedicating fully to bugfixing and testing.
>
>         Last point, some teams have been rescheduling hard and
>         sometimes canceling deserved vacations to respect feature
>         freeze deadline. Just to be clear, this doesn't concern
>         Oslandia this time, but this happened in the past.
>         Seen from this perspective, I'd like we don't repeat this at
>         every release. Customer usually can wait for 4 months more.
>
>         Regards,
>         Régis
>
>
>         Le mer. 5 sept. 2018 à 09:13, Matthias Kuhn
>         <matthias at opengis.ch <mailto:matthias at opengis.ch>> a écrit :
>
>             Thanks Paolo
>
>             On 09/05/2018 09:02 AM, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
>             > Hi Matthias
>             >
>             >
>             > Il 09/05/2018 08:35 AM, Matthias Kuhn ha scritto:
>             >> 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
>             > it makes sense to me - perhaps this should be
>             particularly stressed in
>             > the voting question, otherwise people will feel obliged
>             to vote (which
>             > often means +1) even when they cannot grasp the implication.
>
>             Yes, we can state that explicitly.
>
>             In the past, e.g. here
>             https://www.loomio.org/p/BPc3Wj6l/duplicate-feature-redigitized
>             we had
>             33% participation. Not sure what the reason for abstaining
>             was, one
>             assumption would be that many did not feel comfortable
>             enough to make a
>             decision. Or pure lazyness or disinterest ;P
>
>             Regards
>
>
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>
>     -- 
>     Sorry for being short
>

-- 
Matthias Kuhn
matthias at opengis.ch <mailto:matthias at opengis.ch>
+41 (0)76 435 67 63 <tel:+41764356763>
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