As FESCo doesn't have its own mailing list, and this isn't a trac item exactly as I'm not really requesting any *action* on FESCo's part, I'm sending this to devel and test in the hopes it reaches all parties concerned. This relates mainly to the feature process and hence is of particular interest to FESCo (which owns the feature process) and Robyn (as the feature wrangler). There have been a few occasions in recent releases in which bugs that can essentially be characterized as 'the proposed feature XX is not complete' have been marked as release blockers. When these have come up for review as part of the release blocker process - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:SOP_blocker_bug_process - we have been consistent in not accepting them as blocker bugs. Our rationale for this builds from these premises: * The release blocker process is designed to ensure a given release or pre-release's compliance with the Fedora quality standards, as codified in the release criteria - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Release_Criteria * A feature being incomplete does not necessarily, or even commonly, constitute an infringement of these quality standards We - QA - would like to formalize this position by writing it into the blocker bug process / release criteria (I haven't yet looked at precisely where it'd fit best). We feel that it's best to keep the release blocker process and the feature process separate. In case anyone's worried, let me clarify that this is entirely a process issue: its practical consequences are small. The idea is not to mix together the feature process and the release blocker process. It would still be the case that FESCo could, as part of the feature process, choose to delay a Fedora release or pre-release if it felt that a late proposed feature was important or delicate. QA is not the only group that signs off on Fedora releases; if there are no blocker bugs, QA will say that the release meets quality standards and QA is happy to sign off on it, but this does not preclude FESCo from deciding not to sign off on the release on the basis of an important or delicate feature being incomplete. We'd just like to make it clear that such a decision would be made by FESCo as part of the feature process and tracked however FESCo liked to do it, rather than doing it by marking a bug relating to that feature as a blocker, hence mixing up the feature and blocker bug processes. We wanted to check that this was okay with FESCo and the feature wrangler and the project in general before going ahead, so here we are =) Please let us know if anyone is worried about this. Thanks! -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw http://www.happyassassin.net -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
