Release Status Report - 8.2.0

[Michael Stone]

I promised regular status reports on our release work and I've been lax
in writing them. Here are my current thoughts on the content of and
risks associated with our second ("August") 2008 release, 8.2.0. These
assesments are heavily based on current rates of improvement and
available labor. (I'm seriously concerned about upcoming distractions,
but don't quite know how to factor them in.)

Current Thoughts:

 * I'm EXPECTING major changes in:
 
    a) Sugar frame/home-view rework   -   Marco
    b) Sugar control panel            -   Simon
    c) Browser improvements           -   Simon/Tomeu
    d) F-9 Rebase                     -   Dennis/Michael
    e) Manually enabled power management    -   Chris/Scott/Deepak
    f) Presence & collaboration reliability bugfixing
          - Collabora, Morgan
    g) Backup to XS

 * I'm NOT EXPECTING major changes in

     the Journal 
     the Datastore
     activity isolation  (modulo faster launching)
     the neighborhood view

 * I'm UNCERTAIN about what architectural changes will be available for
   consideration in:
 
     collaboration (e.g. gadget, cerebro, telepathy-cerebro).
           - Collabora, Polychronis
     theft deterrence   - Scott, Emiliano
     software provisioning (e.g. olpc-update / reflash) - Scott, Mitch
     wireless/connectivity  -  Michailis, Cozybit, Deepak

 I'm also UNCERTAIN about several CONFIGURATION DEFAULTS like:
 
     touchpad in absolute or relative mode?
     hot-corners delay?
     activity placement algorithm / view
     invalid browser certificate handling algorithm

Next steps:

  If you're working on something where I'm expecting major change, then
  we should discuss moving your changes from development into an
  official test build for QA in the next week. I suggest contacting me
  by public email with your first proposal. Documentation in Trac bugs
  or wiki pages will be happily accepted.

  (If you think I've misjudged an changeset, please reply so that we can
  fix the issue.)
  
Open Questions:

 * You want to make changes to the release candidates. What is your
   burden of proof (of quality/readiness) today? What will it be N weeks
   from now?
 
 * We managed to ship the Ship.1? release only after we agreed on the
   "WE ARE DONE WHEN: ..." list. What are the contents of the release
   checklist this time around?  (Need to figure out how to involve the
   deployment tech leads... in answering this).


Thanks,

Michael


P.S. - Ancillary documentation:

Release Process: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Plan_of_Record-2008
Priorities: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Priorities-2008

Stub 8.1.1 Features: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_8.1.1_Features
(needs to be finished so we can write 

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_8.2.0_Features 
  
for the QA dept).