Hey folks! At FUDCon Lawrence, Tim Flink presented on the Fedora blocker bug and 'NTH' processes, and we got some interesting and useful feedback. People felt that the 'nice to have' / 'accepted' name used in that process was confusing and difficult to understand, and that the aliases used for the tracker bugs were inconsistent. We developed a proposal to rename the aliases and the 'nice to have' process. This was refined over the period of a few days' discussion on the test@ mailing list: see https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2013-January/113363.html for the thread. There was a very solid consensus that the old scheme sucked and the final form of the new proposal was miles better, and this is not the first time the topic has come up (there are various proposals in the list archives). So I decided to go ahead and Just Do It, putting the proposal into 'production' today. I have adjusted the tracker bugs themselves, https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping/Trackers , https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:SOP_blocker_bug_process , https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:SOP_Blocker_Bug_Meeting , and renamed https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:SOP_nth_bug_process to https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:SOP_freeze_exception_bug_process and adjusted it. I have also made the obvious changes to the relatively large number of other wiki pages that link to and talk about the 'nth' / 'freeze exception' process: see my Wiki edit history for those changes. Here are the practical changes: The 'nice to have' / 'NTH' process is now the 'freeze exception' process: thanks to Jared Smith for the name (though I believe it's actually a resurrection from the old 'freeze exception request' process, which was a better name but a much worse process). This name, very much unlike the other one, 'does what it says on the tin': the freeze exception process is how you request freeze exceptions. Seems pretty simple. 'Freeze exception' is kind of jargon, but it's pretty standard terminology in the tech world, doing a web search for it gives you useful results that explain what it is, as noted it is terminology Fedora has used in the past, and we could not think of a way of concisely expressing the concept in non-jargon English. The 'new style' tracker bug aliases are as follows: AlphaBlocker AlphaFreezeException BetaBlocker BetaFreezeException FinalBlocker FinalFreezeException These names are consistent and, again, 'do what they say on the tin'. We were using aliases ending with "-accepted" for NTH bugs before, which was a really terrible idea (not least because it meant we used the word 'accepted' in two entirely different ways in one process), and the Final aliases did not follow the same pattern as the Alpha and Beta ones. These primary aliases do not need to be versioned, as Kamil Paral perceptively pointed out: as they are only aliases and can be transferred from bug to bug, we can file a new set of tracker bugs for each release, but transfer these unversioned aliases at the time of each release. So right now these aliases are applied to the F19 trackers: at the time of F19 release, they will be transferred to the F20 trackers. This basically means that, at any point in time, you can simply mark a bug as blocking 'AlphaBlocker' and it will be nominated as blocking the next Alpha release. Versioned aliases will still be applied to all the tracker bugs, so that we can find older ones when we need to and so that a consistent naming scheme is always available for all releases. This format will be used: F18AlphaBlocker F18AlphaFreezeExcept F18BetaBlocker F18BetaFreezeExcept F18FinalBlocker F18FinalFreezeExcept The shortening of 'Exception' to 'Except' is unfortunately forced upon us by a Bugzilla limit of 20 characters for alias names. I have submitted a bug requesting this limit be raised: if this is done, the versioned aliases will be changed to follow the format of the unversioned (FreezeException instead of FreezeExcept). I have not yet filed the Fedora 20 tracker bugs as the text in the tracker bug descriptions refers to these aliases and cannot easily be changed after the bug is filed, so I am waiting to see the resolution of this issue before I file those bugs to ensure accurate text can be included. As our Bugzilla allows for multiple aliases to be applied to bugs, bugs can have both the dynamic aliases and their static aliases applied at once, we can maintain 'backwards compatibility', and old trackers can have the new-style aliases applied to them so you can always use the same naming scheme to find the trackers for any release, even old ones. The Fedora 19 tracker bugs consequently have three aliases each at present: the 'dynamic' alias, the new-style versioned alias, and the old-style alias, so people and tools which are used to searching for the old names can still succeed. For example, the F19 Beta freeze exception bug has the aliases 'BetaFreezeException', 'F19BetaFreezeExcept', and 'F19Beta-accepted'. However, we will endeavour to use the new style in all F19 discussion and blocker/FE review meetings. As well as updating the F19 tracker bugs, I have added the 'new style' aliases to the tracker bugs for all previous releases, so they all now have two aliases: their original one, and one that follows the new convention. You can now find the Fedora 10 Beta blocker tracking bug, for instance, by using the alias 'F10BetaBlocker' as well as 'F10Beta'. No need to remember both formats - just always use the new one. The whiteboard fields used to indicate 'accepted' or 'rejected' status for blocker and freeze exception bugs will be AcceptedBlocker/RejectedBlocker (this has not changed) and AcceptedFreezeException/RejectedFreezeException . Abbreviating to AcceptedFE/RejectedFE was considered but rejected on the grounds the abbreviation may be confusing to a maintainer who is not aware of this process: the long version is more understandable. There is, as always, a full list of tracker bugs for future, current and past releases, with all their aliases, at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping/Trackers . I can think of a couple of potential issues with the 'dynamic' tracker names (I'm not sure whether nominations will 'transfer' from one release to the next when we change where the alias points, and if so, whether we want that, especially for closed bugs), but we can burn that bridge when we get to it: if that part of the plan causes a problem we can simply get rid of those aliases and fall back to using the versioned ones for all purposes. As we are preserving the old aliases, I can see no case where this change will affect any existing usage of anything. All QA tools, processes and documentation either already are or should soon be updated to use the new names. We hope this adjustment will make the process somewhat more convenient for project members who are not accustomed to it as we are, and more understandable for maintainers who find their bugs a part of the blocker/FE process if they do not already understand it. We are aware this process is still something of a 'duct tape job', but this is an achievable improvement, and we are also working on more radical adjustments like using flags or even tracking blocker/FE status outside of Bugzilla itself. Please let us know if you have any concerns or reservations about this adjustment: all the changes involved in it are (as far as I'm aware) non-invasive and reversible, so no panic. Thanks everyone! -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora http://www.happyassassin.net -- test mailing list test@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/test
