Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Zarel
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 12:10 PM, bugs buggy buginato...@gmail.com wrote:
 About 1 hour left before I need to tag and build everything.  This
 really is your last chance to get anything you wanted in 2.3B1.
On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 2:53 PM, bugs buggy buginato...@gmail.com wrote:
 Warzone 2100 2.3 Beta 1 has now been released!

GAH. I don't know how to put this. Look...

http://developer.wz2100.net/wiki/ReleaseChecklist

Wait a few days between tagging and actually announcing the release publicly

I know you never listen to me regarding releases, but at least listen
to the Release Checklist?

But this isn't nearly as frustrating to me as the way you do it. Not
nearly so bad this time, since the old version is still on the
Download page since this is a beta. But usually, you just remove all
other downloads from the download page, so for a short period of time,
no one other than Windows users (and people who compile from source)
can download Warzone. And for some reason, you see nothing wrong with
this.

Not even because I'm delaying the release, either. I usually get Mac
builds up within 24 hours. It's been around 15 since tagging as of
right now, and I have Mac builds up. That's shorter than the few
days we're supposed to wait between tagging and announcing to release
publicly.

I've given up trying to convince you to leave old versions on the
download page while the new versions haven't been built yet. But could
you at least wait 24 hours for me? That's all I ask.

-Zarel

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Kreuvf
Zarel wrote:
 I've given up trying to convince you to leave old versions on the
 download page while the new versions haven't been built yet. But could
 you at least wait 24 hours for me? That's all I ask.
Zarel, I think the problems are the time constraints. To me it seems that
Buginator is the main person for releases and he is limited to a few hours on
weekends. So the problem is that delaying the release for a day or two would
actually delay the release for a whole week.

It really is far from the optimum and it could be done better, but with the
current lack of man power this just is not feasible IMHO. Or would you prefer to
wait a whole week between tagging and release?

- Kreuvf



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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Zarel
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 4:38 AM, Kreuvf kre...@warzone2100.de wrote:
 Zarel, I think the problems are the time constraints. To me it seems that
 Buginator is the main person for releases and he is limited to a few hours on
 weekends. So the problem is that delaying the release for a day or two would
 actually delay the release for a whole week.

 It really is far from the optimum and it could be done better, but with the
 current lack of man power this just is not feasible IMHO. Or would you prefer 
 to
 wait a whole week between tagging and release?

Well, there's no reason why Buggy has to handle the entire release,
especially if it causes it to be this far from optimum. If he's not
available 24 hours after tagging, I can announce the release then, or
so could any other dev... Especially since the release announcement is
written ahead of time, and just moved from Staff to News when the
release is announced.

-Zarel

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[warzone2100-dev] A branch for 2.3

2009-11-15 Thread Christian Ohm
Well, since Buginator left out that step, I branched 2.3 from 2.2_net now.
Please leave 2.2_net alone and use 2.3 only.

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Christian Ohm
On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at  4:23, Zarel wrote:
 Wait a few days between tagging and actually announcing the release publicly

Isn't that rule kind of stupid anyway? I thought tags should be touched as
little as possible after tagging, so the waiting period should be before, not
after the tag. And Buginator announced his intention to tag 24 hours before,
so there was some time to test/commit pending stuff/whatever.

 Download page since this is a beta. But usually, you just remove all
 other downloads from the download page, so for a short period of time,
 no one other than Windows users (and people who compile from source)

And people who can read and find the SF/GNA links.


On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at  4:44, Zarel wrote:
 Well, there's no reason why Buggy has to handle the entire release,

Do we have someone else who can make (good) Windows builds? I thought there
were some problems with the crashdumps or something if you don't have exactly
the right setup.

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Dennis Schridde
Hello everyone.

Am Sonntag, 15. November 2009 20:43:50 schrieb Christian Ohm:
 On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at  4:23, Zarel wrote:
  Wait a few days between tagging and actually announcing the release
  publicly
 
 Isn't that rule kind of stupid anyway? I thought tags should be touched as
 little as possible after tagging, so the waiting period should be before,
  not after the tag. And Buginator announced his intention to tag 24 hours
  before, so there was some time to test/commit pending stuff/whatever.
I do not think that this rule is stupid. But then I wrote it originally, so I 
may be biased.

It is based on lots of bad experience, and I can also tell you that the few 
days in that sentence certainly has a purpose.

What we had once, was tag, push out src tarball, then the Windows guy would 
come and try to build, oh it does not, fix, push out windows build.
A little while later someone is building for Mac: try to build, oh it does 
not, fix, push out the mac build.
Then someone actually tried to run the game on, say, Windows. Oups, it 
crashes in level 17 of campaign 40 now, and it is talking about some wrong 
filename - fix, push out a new build.
What we had in the end was 1 tag, 1 tarball, and 3 builds from revisions (or 
not even that) no one was able to figure out later on.
Saying we are going to tag next week, please build and test did not help a 
bit.
Announcing the release on the website along with uploading the tarballs made 
the stuff just worse, because ppl actually downloaded that stuff (who can 
blame them), and, in case the release contained critical errors and thus had 
to be retagged, the confusion increased.

Thus the rule: wait a few days between tagging and releasing.

I am very sceptic that quality will not suffer if you rely on ppl testing 
after someone writes an email to the list that he is about to tag 24h later.
Not only are not many ppl reading this, they are also too lazy to actually 
test, especially not quickly, and the actual workers have full time schedules, 
which do not permit them to throw away whatever they were doing at that moment 
and just jump into WZ QA instead.

  Download page since this is a beta. But usually, you just remove all
  other downloads from the download page, so for a short period of time,
  no one other than Windows users (and people who compile from source)
 
 And people who can read and find the SF/GNA links.
But no users. Since users usually do not dig into any devstuff sites for 
links.

 On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at  4:44, Zarel wrote:
  Well, there's no reason why Buggy has to handle the entire release,
 
 Do we have someone else who can make (good) Windows builds? I thought there
 were some problems with the crashdumps or something if you don't have
  exactly the right setup.
There are issues (but they are fixable - don't look at me, I don't have time).
If Buginator creates the Windows builds, that would be a nice task already.
I think what Zarel means is that he does not also have to carry out the 
tagging, tarballing, announcements, etc, if that would mean that others cannot 
get stuff to build and test in time.

Regards,
devurandom


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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Zarel
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Christian Ohm chr@gmx.net wrote:
 Isn't that rule kind of stupid anyway? I thought tags should be touched as
 little as possible after tagging, so the waiting period should be before, not
 after the tag. And Buginator announced his intention to tag 24 hours before,
 so there was some time to test/commit pending stuff/whatever.

Unfortunately, I can't build Mac binaries from an intention to tag. :|

 And people who can read and find the SF/GNA links.

Which don't exist yet, because of how fast the release is being rushed
out. That's kind of the point of my ML request.

 Do we have someone else who can make (good) Windows builds? I thought there
 were some problems with the crashdumps or something if you don't have exactly
 the right setup.

I didn't say we don't let Buggy do anything at all.

I'm just saying, since the problem appears to be with the 24 hour
waiting period, we simply let someone else do the release
announcements after said period, which appears to consist of moving a
post from the staff forums to the news forums, and copy/pasting that
post into an ML announcement. I'm sure any of us are capable of doing
that.

-Zarel

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Christian Ohm
On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at 21:11, Dennis Schridde wrote:
 What we had once, was tag, push out src tarball, then the Windows guy would 
 come and try to build, oh it does not, fix, push out windows build.
 A little while later someone is building for Mac: try to build, oh it does 
 not, fix, push out the mac build.

Well, now we have Buginator who does a Windows build for release, so no
problems there, and Linux build breakage is also no problem recently I think.
That leaves the Mac builds, which I can't say much about.

 Then someone actually tried to run the game on, say, Windows. Oups, it 
 crashes in level 17 of campaign 40 now, and it is talking about some wrong 
 filename - fix, push out a new build.

That doesn't sound like a bug that would be detected in a few days, since we
don't have any dedicated testers for every release...

 What we had in the end was 1 tag, 1 tarball, and 3 builds from revisions (or 
 not even that) no one was able to figure out later on.
 Saying we are going to tag next week, please build and test did not help a 
 bit.
 Announcing the release on the website along with uploading the tarballs made 
 the stuff just worse, because ppl actually downloaded that stuff (who can 
 blame them), and, in case the release contained critical errors and thus had 
 to be retagged, the confusion increased.
 Thus the rule: wait a few days between tagging and releasing.
 I am very sceptic that quality will not suffer if you rely on ppl testing 
 after someone writes an email to the list that he is about to tag 24h later.
 Not only are not many ppl reading this, they are also too lazy to actually 
 test, especially not quickly, and the actual workers have full time 
 schedules, 
 which do not permit them to throw away whatever they were doing at that 
 moment 
 and just jump into WZ QA instead.

Hm, AFAIR SVN wasn't broken that often recently, and usually gets fixed quite
fast when it is. And if something in the game is broken, chances that someone
will find it in the few days are few, 

   Download page since this is a beta. But usually, you just remove all
   other downloads from the download page, so for a short period of time,
   no one other than Windows users (and people who compile from source)
  And people who can read and find the SF/GNA links.
 But no users. Since users usually do not dig into any devstuff sites for 
 links.

And nobody actually reads the downloads page, it seems... there is an older
releases section with links to the correct SF/GNA dirs (admittedly the first
link is to the wiki releases page that wasn't updated since 2.2 beta2, I
brought it somewhat up to date, though I left the gathering of the various
binary links to someone else).

  Do we have someone else who can make (good) Windows builds? I thought there
  were some problems with the crashdumps or something if you don't have
   exactly the right setup.
 There are issues (but they are fixable - don't look at me, I don't have time).
 If Buginator creates the Windows builds, that would be a nice task already.
 I think what Zarel means is that he does not also have to carry out the 
 tagging, tarballing, announcements, etc, if that would mean that others 
 cannot 
 get stuff to build and test in time.

Well, Buginator does the Windows builds, and those should be done from a tag
(and I think doing the tarball then isn't really much work anyway). Though he
wouldn't have to do the actual announcement, maybe just prepare a rudimentary
post in the staff forum that then gets finished and moved to news when all
builds are available.

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Christian Ohm
On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at 14:20, Zarel wrote:
 Unfortunately, I can't build Mac binaries from an intention to tag. :|

Oh, ok, I misunderstood that. I agree that a short period to prepare other
builds is ok, so they can all be announced together.

  And people who can read and find the SF/GNA links.
 Which don't exist yet, because of how fast the release is being rushed
 out. That's kind of the point of my ML request.

I meant the links to the old version, which you complained about being removed.
There's still the older versions section on the download page, where those
are linked.

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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Dennis Schridde
Am Sonntag, 15. November 2009 22:23:34 schrieb Christian Ohm:
 On Sunday, 15 November 2009 at 21:11, Dennis Schridde wrote:
  Then someone actually tried to run the game on, say, Windows. Oups, it
  crashes in level 17 of campaign 40 now, and it is talking about some
  wrong filename - fix, push out a new build.
 
 That doesn't sound like a bug that would be detected in a few days, since
  we don't have any dedicated testers for every release...
Exactly. But there are these users which actually happen to be playing at that 
level right now, and they will find such issues in the build system / a mod /  
a new file / ... right when they install the new version.

Admitting that my example was a bit far fetched, several times situations 
occurred, where quick users, using the tarball right when it was announced, 
found issues which we missed before. That even happened just hours after the 
announcement, so in just a few hours there were several versions floating 
around. Resulting in different OSes, arches or distros having different bugs 
to fight with. It was annoying to work with: Crashdumps did not match the 
actual code, bugs appeared which should not happen, tarball-checksums for 
distros like Gentoo failed, other distros did not notice the replaced tarballs 
at all, etc.

Thus it seemed better to wait a bit longer before making the final tag public, 
to catch such situations. (Eager users are still downloading tarballs right 
when the ML says its uploaded, or even download from SVN. And they also can 
cope with we retagged, download again. At least that's how it was back 
then.)

If it could be guaranteed that every OS/arch/distro is being built for and 
tested thoroughly immediately after the tag happened (and not before, since 
that calls for inconsistency), then I agree that this could work, too.
As a safety measure the forced slowdown seemed appropriate.

A strict code-freeze for, say, a week, including the thorough testing on all 
OSes/arches as mentioned above, with the final builds being created right 
after the tag, might work just as well.
Again, only provided that it is guaranteed that everything actually happens as 
planned and everyone starts working during that freeze already. Experience and 
this thing being a game, run in spare time, make me sceptic. But why not try 
something new, if you feel that suits you better.
I (and thus the release-checklist) certainly do not want to stay in the way of 
advancement, but rather explain why some rules were invented. If there are 
better solutions to old problems, that is certainly a good thing.

Regards,
devurandom


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Re: [warzone2100-dev] 1 hour left before the tagging of 2.3 B1 (also a comment about branches/2.2)

2009-11-15 Thread Zarel
On Sun, Nov 15, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Christian Ohm chr@gmx.net wrote:
 I meant the links to the old version, which you complained about being 
 removed.
 There's still the older versions section on the download page, where those
 are linked.

True, but they're intended as a contingency in case of unplanned
severe bugs in the most recent version, or historical purposes, etc.
They're not meant for end users, and they're hidden away far too much
to be.

-Zarel

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