[sldev] Viewer Source Release of RC-1.18.6.2

[Joshua Bell]

(There is some content buried in this mail about halfway down. Look for 
the bullets. Most of the rest is me saying "yeah, we could do better")

Alissa Sabre wrote:
>> (1) The change was a single URL + release notes.
>>     
>
> My own WindLight viewer based on 76116 source with necessary URL
> change can't connect to the grid because of the version checking.
> It's natural.  You surely changed version number as well as URL and
> release note.  You just forgot mentioning it.
>   
You're right, I neglected to mention the version numbers as well. :(
> So you knew 1.18.6.4 is scheduled on January 3 when you announced
> availability of 1.18.6.3 on December 29.
>
> Why you didn't say it on December?
>   
As previously mentioned: 1.18.6.3 was an emergency release. There wasn't 
a whole lot of time for planning, nor were there many Lindens around. 
We've done a poor job of sharing a release roadmap in the past; during a 
crisis, on a holiday, when there is a grand total of one person in the 
office, you don't get *improved* communication.

> Linden employees' past practice when an open source developer
> complained about the lack of future release schedules is to say
> something like "Release sechedule is managed by someone else in the
> company.  I don't know it."
>
> I believe you are the first Linden employee who explicitly admitted
> that you knew the future release schedule at least six days in
> advance, had a very good chance to announce it, and kept that
> information from open source developpers.  Hmm...
>   
It's not a conspiracy! Communication takes time, and competes with 
everything else. I probably could have fixed some bugs in our deploy 
mechanisms while I was writing this email, but answering your questions 
seemed like a more appropriate trade-off. In hindsight, yes, mentioning 
"we'll do another source drop soon" might have been worthwhile... but 
we're *always* going to do another source drop soon, and the likelyhood 
of any RC being followed by another one verges on 75%, so it just didn't 
occur to me.
...

Since I *am* the person who manages the release schedule, here's the 
roadmap:

* We're currently testing 1.18.6 RC4. A few of the fixes have failed 
internal QA, so there's going to need to be at least one more iteration. 
Additionally, we're seeing web site load balancer issues that are 
impacting logins, which we need to fix before 1.18.6 can go final.

* We have *just* (within the hour) frozen the code for 1.19.0 as well, 
and will be doing a source drop shortly. Obviously, any further fixes to 
1.18.6 will need to be back ported to 1.19.0. We want to get it out 
ASAP, but as this version has not had any sustained QA on it in a final 
state the quality is unknown. (All of the changes that went into this 
code base had sandbox testing, and integration testing as each piece 
merged in, but there hasn't been any "bake time".)

* In an ideal world, 1.18.6 Viewer goes final circa January 17th, 1.19.0 
Viewer is final circa January 31st.

* It would be logical to expect 1.19.1 RC0 to occur some time around 
that date as well.

There are a lot of caveats in the above roadmap, which means the dates 
are uncertain. I'd be somewhat reluctant to post this to the blog not 
out of worry of information disclosure but because the developers here 
on SLDEV are in a much better position to interpret the data and the 
uncertainty involved.

(The other thing that folks on SLDEV should be able to infer from the 
above process is that it's pretty mechanical - freeze code, spit out 
RC0, RC1.... RCn until it's stabilized, make it final, repeat. At some 
point the thrill of explaining that loses its charm.)
>
> I'm really puzzled why you disclosed this private thing to the
> public.  Did you cried on open source developpers' shoulders?
>   
You asked, I answered. I'm a fan of transparency. I also don't see an 
"us" vs. "them" here - we're all in this together. The answer to "why 
didn't you do a source drop?" was not "there's a vast conspiracy..." but 
"it was a crisis with limited resources." (Maybe I shared too much, but 
I was trying to be honest - it wasn't ideal circumstances for a release, 
so it didn't happen.)

> Well, some private story on my side, then.  I'm not earning money for
> SL development.  I'm just a sunday programmer.  Literally I am.  I
> have almost no time on writing code on weekdays.  So, holiday season
> is the best timing to work on some big project.  I planned something
> on WindLight viewer on this holidays.  Note that in Japan it comes
> slightly late than US.  It's typically Dec. 29 - Jan. 3...  And this
> sudden 1.18.6.3 (or more specifically FL 76453) mandatory update hit
> this timing.  I was so disappointed with it, and lost all my
> motivation working on viewer changes...
>   
I know how that goes - most of my personal projects get 2-3 hours a 
month of attention total, and it's hard to stay motivated. Any bug or 
blocker that can't be tackled in a short window is very demoralizing.

...

As you might infer from this mail, I enjoy reading the traffic on SLDEV 
and wish I had more to contribute. If you haven't heard about an 
upcoming release roadmap recently enough, PLEASE email me directly. (I 
tend to be about 100 messages behind on SLDEV traffic.)