[Development] Qt Project Missing Infrastructure

[Richard Moore]

Qt Project Missing Infrastructure
=================================

These are my notes from the 1 hour session on missing infrastructure
for the Qt project taken
at QtDevDays2011 at the Qt contributor meeting.

* Bugtracker
  * Currently on Nokia can close bugs
  * Plan is that approvers will be able to close bugs etc. too. The
idea is that the JIRA settings will mirror the relevant groups in
gerrit.
  * The Qt JIRA will be moving to qt-project.

* CI
  * Moving to qt-project, but it's hard.
  * Moving away from pulse to an open source implementation.
  * The current build/test farm itself will remain private to nokia.
  * Rohan and Sergio are working on these changes.
  * Intention is that 3rd parties should be able to provide additional
test platforms.
  * Desire to allow people to test stuff without actually pushing it
into the main build
    * Possibly a mechanism that allows people to request that the
tests be run against a branch.
    * Who should be allowed to do this?
    * Possibly get approval by asking the QA team, or the maintainer
of a subsystem.
  * In terms of development for platforms a developer doesn't have
    * Ask someone to test it for you
    * Send to build system, wait for the results!
    * Possibility of asking for someone to allow you access to a
machine running the relvant OS.
    * Possibility that companies such as Nokia, Digia, Intel etc.
might be willing to provide some machines for this kind of purpose.

* Mailing lists
  * All discussion will generally happen on the public lists.
  * Internal Nokia lists are to close.
  * It's fine to have face to face discussions etc. but write them up
for the mailing list if they're substantial.
  * If it's not on the mailing list it's not decided. Only by posting
to the ML can a decision be made.

* wiki.qt-project.org now exists
  * Intended to be a wiki for people developing Qt itself
  * Some docs from the existing wiki should move here
  * Not for info about developing /using/ qt

* There are no internal docs on how things work to release
  * Never been written down
  * Also the older changelogs can never be made into a releasable state.

* Do we need more MLs?
  * Wait and see, qt-interest has remained relatively steady

* Qt-project should host the archive of all past qt releases.

* Releases
  * Start a release team
  * Release team will 'start the clock' on a release, then decide when
the required quality level has been reached.
  * The decision of if the quality is good enough will be made by the
release team.
  * Aim to release within a month to six weeks of starting the process.
  * If bugs are found during testing then maintainers are the ones who
should ensure they get fixed.

* Need a build farm and a content distribution network
  * Qt project to release source code
  * Should we also release binaries? Probably yes, so we need to be
able to build them.
  * Should we release binary snapshots such as those currently
provided for creator?
  * Leave the SDK releases to nokia?
    * SDK release is huge, approx 1TB of data on the 1st day, 20TB in
the first week.
    * Leaving it to nokia will delay the binary release while legal
checks etc. are performed.