Jason, thanks for taking the time to write this up. It is a good read. One extra tidbit I'd like to discussion is this. When I recommended we burn the version when the vote/build fails, I wasn't expecting we would move the fixed issues to the new version. Let's not do that. I find that confusing because it's impossible to keep track which issues are tied to what vote. For example, when 3.2.4 failed with 20 fixed issues, I want to see the 3.2.4 issues stay as-is and 3.2.5 to have new issues. We don't need the extra JIRA maintenance of moving issues when a version is burned, and, overall, it is a better historical record of the facts. WDYT?
Cheers, Paul On Sun, Dec 14, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Jason van Zyl <ja...@takari.io> wrote: > > Hi, > > The discussion keeps resurfacing about how we deal with failed releases so > I'll summarize how I think it should ultimately be done as a starting point. > > I'll go over the cases we've encountered thus far: > > 1) The user case prefers non-disjunct sets of releases, or from our PoV > re-used versions. I believe people are confused by missing versions and > will always result in questions like "What happened to version X?", where X > is a non-viable build. Not many people read release notes, will not > self-serve and it will just be a lot of questions and confusion. The > typical user doesn't care about the question of whether a particular build > is viable or not. I think they naturally expect contiguous, increasing > versions when they update to new versions of a product. > > 2) The tester case prefers new versions but has tolerated re-used > versions. Testers for core only really have to deal with the binary > distribution and if it gets thrown away there's not much chance of local > repository inconsistency because the typical tester, who is not an > integrator, isn't going to depend on the new core release for anything. > Running 3.2.4 doesn't put anything related to 3.2.4 in your local > repository. > > 3) The integrator case prefers new versions. Different content with the > same version is a violation of our immutability philosophy and can cause > issues. Even though this is very much contained at the moment let's be > optimistic and believe we will have many integrators that will test > pre-released versions. Igor is right in that it's not fun to keep track of > this and why should the burden be placed on the integrator. The answer is > it shouldn't. > > 4) The release manager case prefers new versions. I have typically reused > versions because I believe 1) is true. It's a PITA to erase tags, shuffle > issues around in JIRA, and reset the POMs. I would prefer to just move > forward, but I have done it because the user confusion is not worth the > small effort it takes me to clean up a few resources. One hour for me > versus thousands of hours of confusion for all users. It's an easy > calculation. > > Taking all these cases into consideration so that all participants are > satisfied I think we ultimately want increasing and contiguous versions for > users, testers and integrators while the release manager does not have to > shuffle a bunch of resources around in the event of a non-viable build. > What we want is a form of continuous delivery where a version like 3.2.4 is > the version that we call it to the outside world (some refer to it as the > marketing version) and the qualifier changes from build to build so we have: > > 3.2.4-qualifier > > And for simplicity's sake let's just say the qualifier is a build number > so we end up with: > > 3.2.4-01 > 3.2.4-02 > ... > 3.2.4-NN > > Every build is a complete build that can be released, and in the stream of > builds that are produced we decide that one is good enough for public > consumption. Nothing in the issue tracking or documentation needs to change > as it's still referred to as 3.2.4. People who download the distribution > aren't going to care what the exact versions say on the JARs but some > education might be required to tell people that something like 3.2.4 is > actually 3.2.4-05 if they want to refer to an artifact from 3.2.4. I don't > think making aliases to the marketing versions are a good idea and wouldn't > want to duplicate artifacts so that they can be referred to by the > marketing version. People will just become accustom to knowing a qualifier > is necessary to find the actual version. > > This is more how things work at Eclipse where if you look at something > from Jetty: > > > http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cgav%7C1%7Cg%3A%22org.eclipse.jetty%22%20AND%20a%3A%22jetty-servlet%22 > > You'll see that something like jetty-servlet 9.2.3 is actually referred to > as 9.2.3.v20140905. Jetty seems somewhat inconsistent with respect to > milestones but you get the idea. I think this works for all parties but > especially users where say we all happen to write blog entries about 3.2.4 > and it fails twice and we actually release 3.2.6. This is just so confusing > as anything that referred to 3.2.4 now really means 3.2.6 which is totally > inconsistent. I think skipping failed versions from the users perspective > like we are currently doing is just a recipe for a massive amount of > confusion and wasted time. Moving toward a stream based approach with a > marketing version and qualifiers for actual versions is really the only way > it can work for everyone. > > Thanks, > > Jason > > ---------------------------------------------------------- > Jason van Zyl > Founder, Apache Maven > http://twitter.com/jvanzyl > http://twitter.com/takari_io > --------------------------------------------------------- > > To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to > act in accordance with your thinking. > > -- Johann von Goethe > > > > > > > > > >
