[Qgis-psc] QGIS LTR release schedule

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Alex, Giovanni, Jürgen and PSC colleagues,

Sorry about my late reply.

So it seems to me that you have nothing against releasing more often 
again - right?

Your main problem seems to be that you have no way to get a hands on a 
release before it is released to the general public - right? Jürgen - is 
there something we can do, so that Alex and Giovanni can get a new 
release a week before the general public gets it?

Your current tests are quite limited: does it install correctly, can it 
open some projects, etc. - no extensive testing done with the current 
resources and time frame.

It would be great if Jürgen could make the packages first available to 
Giovanni/Alex - before they get released officially to the general 
public.

We can also discuss the release and test process in Den Bosch - I see 
that Jürgen and Giovanni are there - but I don't see Alex listed - are 
you planning to participate, Alex?

Thanks and greetings,
Andreas

On 2023-03-09 10:21, Alexandre Neto via QGIS-PSC wrote:

> Hello Andreas et al.
> I almost forgot the plan to reducing the number of patch releases.
> What I have been doing, even with monthly patch releases, is to test 
> the LTR releases when they happen at the same time as a new stable 
> release ( I believe that's when the major issues may arrise from 
> possible dependency bumps). But we can try to make it on every month on 
> the LTR patch releases if it's only for the extra 3 months.
> Unfortunately, The test cases list is still not very big, and mainly 
> limited by installation tests:
> https://qgis.tenant.kiwitcms.org/plan/37/3-28-4-installation-smoke-tests
> It would be nicer if we can add specific tests for "dangerous" 
> backports or bumps in dependencies, but we would need a tip from 
> developers about it, as, at least for me, it's not always clear what 
> could be the implications of each change.
> To be honest, given the current packaging infrastructure, because 
> there's no "testing freeze", and every LTR patch appears immediately on 
> OSGeo4w, many users install the new LTR version before me or Giovanni 
> have the chance to test it out.
> By testing freeze, I mean a period, minimum 1 week, where there is no 
> more bug fixing, packaging is done ( maybe only on osgeo4w?) and we can 
> test the final artifacts before they are released to public. For this, 
> those artifacts could not land on OSGeo4w LTR branch.
> Without this period, the first manual tests, even if not organized, are 
> always done by less patient users that are eager to install the new 
> versions and automatically update the LTR.
> Kind regards,
> Alexandre Neto
> 
> On Tue Mar 7, 2023, 08:39 PM GMT, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> 
>> Hi Alex and Giovanni,
>> 
>> In today's PSC meeting the PSC discussed (again) the LTR release 
>> schedule, which was recently thinned out due to discussion on QEP 239 
>> "Manual Testing on LTR Releases and Release Schedule", [1] When we 
>> accepted the thinned out schedule for LTR, we did not have on the 
>> table that there is also a "quarantine" rule - that means that a 
>> backport should first go into the regular release where it is tested 
>> more broadly, before it can be backported to LTR. In worst case, there 
>> is a waiting period of about 4 months, until the backport ends up in 
>> LTR, because of the thinned out release schedule.
>> 
>> We want to suggest yet another change in the schedule that the larger 
>> organizations, that start to look at an LTR usually after it passed 
>> the first three months, can still get regular monthly releases until 
>> we reached approx. the 3.xx.9 release. Then I think we can thin out 
>> the schedule as planned before.
>> 
>> Alex and Giovanni: would you support that change? What additional 
>> resources or support would you need to handle this change with respect 
>> to manual testing?
>> 
>> Thank you for your reply,
>> Andreas
>> 
>> --
>> Andreas Neumann QGIS.ORG [2] board member (treasurer)
> 
> _______________________________________________
> QGIS-PSC mailing list
> QGIS-PSC at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc



Links:
------
[1] https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/issues/239
[2] http://QGIS.ORG
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-psc/attachments/20230323/54bc4cca/attachment-0001.htm>