It's not so much the building of the RC as giving the content a detailed editorial review.
The build/release process itself is well-documented and published with every Ref Guide: https://lucene.apache.org/solr/guide/how-to-contribute.html#building-publishing-the-guide. It was designed from the artifact process, so it's nearly identical as a process. It's really barely a burden. In terms of preparing the content, there are a number of things I do: First, I try to ensure that every issue in CHANGES.txt that should be documented has been documented. That involves an intensive review of CHANGES.txt and a comparison with commits to find what might be missing, then chasing people down to see if they intend to make changes or not. Assuming the person responds, then it's waiting for them to get their stuff done. This is usually about 2-3 days of effort, before the waiting around for answers and/or commits. Then I review every commit and read it for clarity and correct English usage. Does it fit where someone put it? Does it explain what the author is hoping it explains? Also, many of our authors are not native English writers, and deserve the assistance of an editor to help put their work in the best possible light. In some cases, I feel I should extensively edit the contribution, which occasionally involves also immersing myself into the change itself. This is another 2-4 days of effort. Then there's this list of problems people commit all the time, many of which I can often resolve reasonably quickly with find/replace: - sentences that don't end in periods - inconsistency with instances of "i.e.," and "e.g.," (not "i.e.", "ie:", "IE", etc.) - no spaces between words and punctuation (commas, colons, periods), such as "here is :" or "word , word" - used sentence case for section titles instead of headline case - used abbreviations instead of the correct word ("ZK" instead of "ZooKeeper" being the biggest one here, but also "params" instead of "parameters" is quite common) - misspellings like "Zookeeper" instead of "ZooKeeper, or "solr" instead of "Solr" - config file names and parameter names/values not in monospace - lists of parameters are not properly formatted (should not be in tables) These are all to make the Ref Guide as consistent, cohesive, and easy to read as possible. It may be written by 30 people but it shouldn't read like it is. Should I do all this while the commits are coming through? Sure, but the reality is I can't. If we want to release the moment someone proposes a release, then most of my find/replace list above needs to go into precommit so these problems don't make it into the Guide to begin with. (Which might be onerous since we'd all get stalled waiting for someone to fix a typo...but really, precommit is meant in part to find your typos so why should this be different?) It would always still need editorial review, however, and that's not something we'll ever be able to fully automate. I'm more than happy to have a little help there, but assume since people aren't doing it today they don't have time, don't feel they have the skills, or don't want to bother. Or maybe I just kill myself for a level of quality no one else cares about...not sure I can stop doing it though if I'm the RM. (as a side note on that though, if we do merge the releases someday, then whoever RMs is going to have to wait for these editorial processes to be completed or the vote may fail because the Ref Guide reads like crap.) On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 11:33 AM jim ferenczi <jim.feren...@gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks for explaining the situation Cassandra. I was planning to build the > first RC beginning of next week to give people a week to discover blockers. > I can certainly slow down things but I don't think that the timing > differs from other releases. I am not aware of the operations that are > required for the Ref guide release process but what do you think of sharing > the tasks with the RM ? We could even merge the two releases and make the > RM responsible of both if the process is documented. I'd be happy to > experiment this for the 7.5 release if you want. > > Le mar. 4 sept. 2018 à 17:55, Cassandra Targett <casstarg...@gmail.com> a > écrit : > >> I'm not objecting per se, but I feel like we used to propose a version >> and then give people a week before the branch was cut. Maybe that was just >> RM choice? From a personal perspective, I much prefer that model because >> the Ref Guide requires A LOT of my attention and my work there kicks into >> high gear as soon as a release is proposed. >> >> Even though the artifact and Ref Guide release processes are separate >> today, we want them to be a single process, so I need to act as though your >> timeframe for the RC is the deadline for Ref Guide edits to do an RC of the >> Ref Guide at the same time. That means I'm on your timetable, no matter >> what else I may have promised to my bosses and colleagues. It's stressful >> already to try to get it all done - I usually don't finish everything I >> want to do - and adding the burden of having to backport everything to 2 >> branches instead of 1 just makes it tedious as well. >> >> Also, yesterday was a major holiday in the US, and as of this moment it's >> not even noon on the East Coast, so there's a percentage of the community >> who may not even have seen your proposal yet. >> >> I greatly appreciate that you've volunteered to do the release and are >> energized to get it rolling, but is there a reason an RC has to be done by >> the beginning of next week? >> >> On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 10:36 AM Joel Bernstein <joels...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> +1, >>> >>> I'll likely be adding some Solr RefGuide changes later in the week to >>> the 7.5 branch but I'll make sure they don't effect the build. >>> >>> >>> Joel Bernstein >>> http://joelsolr.blogspot.com/ >>> >>> >>> On Tue, Sep 4, 2018 at 10:52 AM jim ferenczi <jim.feren...@gmail.com> >>> wrote: >>> >>>> Thanks all, >>>> since there are no objections I am planning to cut the branch for 7.5 >>>> tomorrow. I'll build the first RC early next week so there will be some >>>> room to merge important bug fixes later this week. All blockers except >>>> SOLR-12727 seem to be merged/resolved, I'll watch the remaining solr issue >>>> for updates. >>>> >>>> Le mar. 4 sept. 2018 à 10:21, jim ferenczi <jim.feren...@gmail.com> a >>>> écrit : >>>> >>>>> Sure Jan, this is a nice cleanup, +1 to backport in 7x. >>>>> >>>>> Le mar. 4 sept. 2018 à 10:16, Jan Høydahl <jan....@cominvent.com> a >>>>> écrit : >>>>> >>>>>> Jim, we have some release process improvements in LUCENE-5143. >>>>>> Basically, we'll only have one KEYS file instead of three plus those in >>>>>> the >>>>>> versioned folders that we have today. And the release py script will >>>>>> start >>>>>> checking that the RM's key is present in the KEYS file. Would you be ok >>>>>> with that being committed and you being the first RM to use it for 7.5.0? >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> Jan Høydahl, search solution architect >>>>>> Cominvent AS - www.cominvent.com >>>>>> >>>>>> 3. sep. 2018 kl. 10:42 skrev jim ferenczi <jim.feren...@gmail.com>: >>>>>> >>>>>> Hi all, >>>>>> >>>>>> 7.4 has been released two months ago on June 29th and we have new >>>>>> features, enhancements and fixes that are not released yet so I'd >>>>>> like to start working on releasing Lucene/Solr 7.5.0. >>>>>> There's also a bad bug with index sorting that deletes the wrong >>>>>> documents when delete by query is used: >>>>>> https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LUCENE-8466 >>>>>> >>>>>> I can create the 7.5 branch later this week and build the first RC >>>>>> early next week if that works for everyone. Please let me know if there >>>>>> are >>>>>> bug fixes that needs to be fixed in 7.5 and might not be ready by >>>>>> then. >>>>>> >>>>>> Cheers, >>>>>> Jim >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>>
