Do we need to talk about OpenWrt Rules?

[Petr Štetiar]

Rich Brown <richb.hanover at gmail.com> [2020-12-10 07:43:25]:

[I've removed all the emails and keep only openwrt-adm@ in the Cc]

Hi,

> And this is exactly the problem I see.

I think, that you can't fix that with decision rules. 

> Because of our distributed decision-making process, no one (no single
> person) has the ability to decide when to pull the trigger on a release. So
> I am proposing a mechanism to make this explicit.

As I see it, the release currently happens when Hauke and zorun are happy with
the state of the tree. Hauke is single person who pulls the trigger. What is
more explicit? :-)

> For example, we have decided on a six-month schedule. It was my
> understanding (from Hamburg) that we would choose dates (say, October and
> April) to have releases. All the features that are ready to go for the
> upcoming release would be included. Features that won't be ready will be
> held for the next release.

It's always easy on a paper. In real world, it would mean either half-assed
release like for example release without some targets, missing/broken features
on some targets etc.

> This is where the decision making process becomes important. For each
> release, someone will propose:
> 
> 	"The following list of features will be in OpenWrt XX.YY to be
> 	released on ddMMMyyyy"
> 
> Then there's a discussion. We examine all the ramifications, decide whether
> we believe each feature can be complete by the specified date, maybe decide
> to postpone one of the features. (Please don't get hung up on time limits
> here - this discussion should go on as long as necessary.)

You can't simply postpone DSA for example in the current stage and postpone it
to next release. The ship has sailed.

> And it's always on-topic to ask for a change: For example, to start another
> discussion saying, "Feature X is taking a long time. Should we delay XX.YY
> by a week or two, or should we move it to the following release?"

As you can see, postponing is not always possible, like for example with the
DSA. You would simply do more harm now by postponing it. So it's better to
bite the bullet and simply move forward.

If you want to execute that task, and make the releases every 6 months a
reality, then I think, that you're looking for the answer to the following
question:

 What needs to be changed so OpenWrt can provide releases every 6 months?

I guess, that the answer to this question is not "more complex decision
rules".

Cheers,

Petr