visibility of release process

[Aristedes Maniatis]

I've resisted sending this email for a while since I really don't want  
to start a bikeshed nor a flame. However there comes a time to express  
my thoughts over the lack of visibility of the release process for  
FreeBSD 7.1. Here are the resources I am aware of:

* release timeline [1]. This page makes no mention of beta 2 which is  
now some weeks old, so I assume the page is not actively used as a  
communication tool for the status of the release.

* this list [2]. Although betas are announced here, there is no  
information about what is happening next.

* subversion. Without checking out the whole repository, it is a  
little hard to use this as a news source and emails to the commit list  
still look more like cvs than svn so it is a bit hard to see which  
branch commits are going to. [3]

* the bug tracker. Let's just say that FreeBSD's bug tracker is fairly  
primitive and 'target release' is not an option.


I'd like to make several suggestions which could improve the  
transparency of the release process:

1. Short term fix: re could make a progress announcement on the  
appropriate lists every 14 days during the release process. Just a  
short summary of URLs pointing to the bug tracker.

2. Some web based friendly end-user visibility on the commit process,  
per branch. People can see what is going in and being fixed, but not  
what is left outstanding. Fisheye is an option because it costs  
nothing except the small load on the svn server.

3. Improvements to the bug tracker. Personally I'd love to see  
something like Jira used [4] with all the sophistication of workflow,  
release notes, voting for bugs, etc, etc.


I'm happy to help with 2 and/or 3 in terms of contribution of my time  
and experience.


Cheers

Ari Maniatis





[1] http://www.freebsd.org/releases/7.1R/schedule.html
[2] That is FreeBSD-stable
[3]  I've also made an attempt to have Atlassian use Fisheye to  
produce an friendly overview of the repository, however I need to get  
permission from FreeBSD for this to happen before Atlassian will go  
ahead and index the whole svn repository. I've been unable to get  
anyone to respond to my requests in that regard. The result might look  
a bit like this: http://fisheye6.atlassian.com/
[4] Disclaimer: I am an Atlassian partner and like their products, but  
stand to gain nothing by the decision FreeBSD core make, I just think  
it is the best product for FreeBSD's requirements and it works well  
over at Apache.



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