[maemo-developers] 3.2007.10-7 - Detailed change log?

[From: Quim Gil]

Hi, back from holidays.

mmm where to start

On Fri, 2007-08-03 at 20:23 +0100, ext Andy Mulhearn wrote:
> You "Nokia" tell me  
> as an end user nothing about what's in each release. From start to  
> finish, there's no information in a release that tells me what it  
> includes. 

Let's see what Nokia has told end users about the last release:

(((moved to the end of the message since Jakub posted most if it while I
was writing this email)))

I would say the majority of end users and application developers can
live happily with this. All this is much more than we had in previous
releases: compare to the IT OS 2007 / maemo 3.0 release 6 months before
and you will see the progress done.

Is this not enough? Agreed, this is why more work is being done. In
order to get into details let's de-mix some aspects that are quite mixed
in this discussion - helping nobody:

NEW FEATURES vs FIXED BUGS

Features and bugs go through totally different channels in our
development process. Offering more level of detail about new features is
doable. We made a first step for the latest update, and for Chinook we
plan to have a level of detail that will hopefully make happy power
users (and developers when we talk about development related tools).

About fixed bugs reported in the public bugzilla, we know we owe to the
users and developers reporting those bugs a better response. The
progress done in the last 6 months is remarkable but we are still not
there. We tried but we couldn't have an updated report in the last
release. We are still working in our processes. Being conservative I
expect the Chinook release to have a partial collection of fixed bugs
and get into good quality standards by Diablo.

END USER ORIENTED vs DEVELOPER ORIENTED

Nokia develops products mainly for mainstream consumers and maemo offers
a platform mainly to application developers. I think the level of detail
provided in the last release to these two groups is quite decent. One
exception would be the users that have submitted bugs, as mentioned
before. Another exception would be the platform developers, that just
recently we have confirmed that we want to serve as well.

If you disagree with the previous paragraph please file bugs and
requests for enhancement, being as specific as possible. I'm the direct
responsible of this area and this is one of my priorities (again) for
the current release under development.

INTERNAL vs EXTERNAL

Nowadays a Nokia developed piece of code goes through a full internal
process before being published in a new release. Testing and bugfixing
are part of this process, generating lots of bugs that are fixed before
the code is made public. Nokia won't publish information about bugs
fixed before the new code is released.

Things change as soon as the code is published. Known bugs should be
shared and updates on publicly submitted bugs should be updated. In fact
those bugs already solved in internal releases should be already
updated, and some of this is already happening now.

A field of progress has been the release of software under development,
allowing the community to file bugs before an official release. We will
do more of this and we can do more if all of us conclude that is worth
going for a public maemo distribution, where our integration process
would be public.

DISTRIBUTION vs PACKAGES

Even if we agree that we need t provide more details on new features and
fixed bugs, things like a detailed change log and a full list of bugs
fixed belong more to the package / application level than to the release
of a whole distribution / operating system. An IT OS consists of
hundreds of packages and we can't expect each one of them offering the
same level of detail than i.e. a new Inkscape release.

We are happy comparing maemo release notes with the release notes of
other distributions or operating systems. And then we can also compare
releases of applications with an end user impact, platform components
and so on. Comparing apples with apples and oranges with oranges we will
be able to find easier a satisfactory solution.

For instance at a package level all the open sources include a
changelog. If you find the level of detail isn't enough please file a
bug against that package.

OPEN SOURCE vs PROPRIETARY

Open source software and non-free software usually deal differently with
the details provided in updates and new developments. We need to agree
in the appropriate feedback and level of detail that is desirable,
useful and possible for each case. We are happy agreeing on documented
levels of details to be satisfied.

NOKIA DEVELOPED vs THIRD PARTY

We are responsible of all the software released in the IT OS, but we are
"more" responsible of the software we develop. We are happy agreeing on
the information to be provided in the new releases of the packages
developed by Nokia. We are more likely to remit responsibilities to
upstream projects, partners or other 3rd party combination when it comes
to discuss their own packages.


Having clear all the above my feeling is that we are not that far from
a) agreeing on feasible and satisfactory solutions for each case and b)
implementing these solutions in 1-2 releases.

At least I hope this email will help all of us moving forward from the
YouDontMakeAnyProgress vs YouDonUnderstandTheComplexity tennis game.


PS: the 'what Nokia has told end users' excerpt I had written before
Jakub's post:

- "What's new" popup in the N800 pages at nokia.com:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4307030

- Extended version in Tableteer and maemo.org: Feature upgrade release
to the Internet Tablet OS 2007 edition
http://maemo.org/news/view/1183705330.html

We also have told this to developers:

- maemo 3.2 Bora released with minor updates
http://maemo.org/news/view/1183706440.html

- full release notes
http://tablets-dev.nokia.com/3.2/maemo-sdk-relnotes_3.2.txt

- content comparisson
http://repository.maemo.org/stable/3.2/content_comparison.html

And last week:

Internet Tablet OS source packages available in the repository
http://maemo.org/news/view/1186118712.html

The sources: http://repository.maemo.org/pool/maemo3.2/free/source/

-- 
Quim Gil - http://maemo.org