Release plan/Lessons learned

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This is a list of lessons learned from the previous releases, things that turned out well and should be kept for the next release as well as thing that didn't turn out so well and should be changed for future releases. Ideally, the release plan should be updated and augmented so that the lessons learned are incorporated accordingly.

3.20

  • Thumbs down icon The release should not be announced only on the main web page. It should also be announced on the following places:
    • The official forum
    • The developer list
    • The newsletter
As things turned out this time around, most of our users seem unaware that a new version have been released.
Johan G (Talk | contribs) 19:33, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

Thumbs down iconAdvice users to delete residual settings from previous versions.

After upgrading to 3.2 on Windows 7, I struggled with strange rendering, misbehaving TerraSync and endless crash on load until I found out that the old 3.0 settings were still there in the Roaming folder. After simply deleting this folder ( C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\flightgear.org\ ), and reinstalling FlightGear, I think, there was never any more trouble and everything worked perfectly. --Jarl Arntzen (talk) 19:03, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

3.00

JSBSim Sync

Cquote1.png One point that might be worth considering is whether we want to update JSBSim now or not. OTOH one consequence of updating is that there might be need to adjust some FDM configurations (I have no clear picture what has changed in JSBSim/CVS since the last update and therefore the size of that risk). Otherwise we leave the update to post-3.0.0. [1]
— Anders Gidenstam
Cquote2.png


Cquote1.png I did not see this coming (feature freeze) and, yes, there are some important changes in JSBSim that should be updated. I need to merge some offline changes into JSBSim CVS first, though.[2]
— Jon S. Berndt
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png I Guess it's too late to integrate the latest JSBSim code now?[3]
— Erik Hofman
Cquote2.png
  1. Anders Gidenstam (2013-12-17 21:15:58). Release preparations - feature freeze starts today.
  2. Jon S. Berndt (2013-12-17 21:15:58). Release preparations - feature freeze starts today.
  3. Erik Hofman (2014-01-17 10:27:53). Release preparations: version number is now 3.0.0.

Merge Request Handling

Cquote1.png Fact is, merge requests do get ignored most of the time, unless you know one of the active developers. I had a merge request pending for three months to update my own code in the tree, not touching anything else. It wasn't downright rejected, but was ignored for enough time for me to start working on something else. Hence I'm not posting any more merge requests and instead I'm keeping my own separate tree (let's not call it fork, since I'm the only user). Though I admit, sometimes it's a major pain to keep up with changes in the main tree.[1]
— Adrian Musceac
Cquote2.png


Cquote1.png I can sympathize with the developers. I do know they have their personal agendas, limited time, and a lot to do without having to bother with external users's whining. On the other hand, I can't be expected to babysit my merge requests too much either since I'm in the same position (I do contribute to other projects as well, and have my own to contend with). I think the best way would be to asign a developer by drawing straws every month, and whoever loses gets to look at merge requests on Gitorious and make at least one comment (looks good/ugly code/don't like your nickname etc.). Having one year old merge requests without even one comment is unacceptable in my opinion, no matter which excuses can be provided.[2]
— Adrian Musceac
Cquote2.png


Cquote1.png People get busy and miss things. If someone sits quietly for a year on a commit request, they've got nobody to blame other than themselves. I agree that some kind of scheduled review process should be put in place - things shouldn't fall through the cracks if it can be avoided. [3]
— GeneB
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png I agree pretty much entirely - not commenting one merge requests for such a long time is a Bad Thing, and indeed discourages contribution. I like the idea of having a rota of people responsible to at least reviewing merge requests. At present I'm discouraged from reviewing merge requests because I don't feel qualified to do so in many areas, but I could easily provide at least some useful feedback.[4]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
  1. Adrian Musceac (2013-12-16 06:12:12). osgEarth integration into FG 3.0.
  2. Adrian Musceac (2013-12-16 06:12:12). osgEarth integration into FG 3.0.
  3. GeneB (2013-12-16 17:25:37). osgEarth integration into FG 3.0.
  4. Stuart Buchanan (2013-12-17 21:53:24). osgEarth integration into FG 3.0.

Distribution

  • Seed torrents once the release is out

2.12

Release postponed:

Due to real life constraints and the low number of active core developers, we've hit a fluctuation where pretty much everyone is occupied with something else at the moment. As everybody seems to be caught in some real life trouble, we can't see a better way to get the release out than delaying it for a while. Also, it seems that it will take longer than usual to address any issues found in the RCs. Thus, we have agreed to postpone the upcoming FlightGear 2.12 release by a month, to provide sufficient time to handle release candidates and process end-user feedback. [1]

Distribution:

  • we should make sure to seed torrents once the release is out [1] [2] [3]

RCs:

  • we should try to get out release candidates earlier to give testers a chance to actually run the RCs [4]
Cquote1.png could we generate a full installation RC package for testing? It would make it easier for testers not familiar with Git to use it, and would be quite handy for people like myself who do their development on Linux, but have Windows systems available for testing but without the git infrastructure or the time to download the entire git fgdata repository.[1]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png Jenkins only does what it's told by the scripts (mostly in fgmeta besides the CMake files) - so we're still at the mercy of missing files in the installer description and so on - I didn't yet automate a 'smoke test'[1] on Jenkins, since that would mean keeping a clean environment to run test installs, and involve several expensive operations since we'd be launching the sim. That's all doable but requires VMs and more energy than I have. In general I've been hoping to get enough people using the nightly builds that an automated smoke-test would be unnecessary but that's probably optimistic[2]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png MSVC has a very powerful source view level debugging, but at present this fails in some auto-generated ctor/dtor code before it reaches 'main()' so can not be used ;=((. In the Debug build 'new' is replaced with a 'new_dbg' which deliberately fills the allocation with 0xcc... so if a person does NOT initialize ALL variables simple dtor code like 'if (buf) delete buf;' crashes.[3]
— Geoff McLane
Cquote2.png

FGData:

Usability/GUI:

  • the menubar is increasingly getting a little cluttered, especially the "debug" entry - given the inflexibility of PUI, this also means that there are usability issues, because certain menu items are only accessible with a certain minimal screen resolution, other items cannot be accessed easily. A short term suggestion made, was moving all "Reload X" items into a dedicated "reload" menu, and moving tools to a separate "tools" menu, so help reduce the size of the debug menu [11] [12]


Core:

  • A few users reported issues that seemed possibly related to aggressive compiler optimizations, exposing the cmake/build flags via the property tree would seem like a good idea [13]
  • Some windows users reported that TerraSync would only work for them in 32-bit compatibility mode [14]
  • Providing support to new users would be greatly simplified if we could expose debug related info via the property tree, i.e. to ensure that OSG/SG/FG were not built in DEBUG mode [15]
  • We should look into exposing OSG plugin information via the help/about dialog, i.e. writing the info the property tree [16]
  • There we still some reports about "SQLite API abuse", presumably due to non-English characters in installation paths,maybe the installer could check paths prior to installation? [17]
  • We kept seeing SQLite/NavDB Cache related bug reports [18] ticket #1227
  • Like it used to be the case with detailed log files, most end users are usually very willing to help, but unable to provide backtraces - reconsider adding google breakpad support [19]
  • under some circumsances, initial navcache/POI processing took up to 10 minutes, even on powerful Linux boxes with plenty of horsepower and RAM using just the default settings [20]
  • the way we are incrementing version numbers in SG_SRC/FG_SRC and FGDATA seems to be causing issues ("base package check failed"), which were reported already during the last release cycles (all the way back to 2.8), even one core developer reported the issue during the 2.10 cycle (many people affected by this seem to be using brisa's download & compile script, but it doesn't appear to be Linux-specific, it also seems to happen on Windows). It seems fgdata version is 2.12 while the SG/FG source trees in next were still looking for 2.11 - could be also because of cmake caching, and the cache not being updated properly once certain files are touched in SG/FG source, still investigating... [21] [22]. The problem seems to be this.
  • some rendering issues related to OSG 3.1.9 were reported [23] [24] [25] [26]
  • it would probably be a good idea to explicitly check for the latest supported OSG version in our SG/FG CMakeLists.txt, to ensure that people do not build FG against OSG versions that are not yet supported, with some option to override/disable the check (for developers) [27] [28]
  • while the delayed tile loading is a big improvement in the responsiveness, delayed loading of models caused issues for helicopter pilots, because they could no longer start on buildings - it might be better to make the new behavior property-configurable through a prop switch, so that helicopters could override the setting during startup in their aircraft-set.xml file [29]

Version numbering:

Cquote1.png There was already a couple of people on IRC confused that 2.12 is different to 2.1.2 (since minor version numbers > 9 are something of a rarity in many people's perception).[4]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png Give our release pattern is date scheduled, an Ubuntu style numbering scheme would actually make more sense, but a bit more effort to move too.[5]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png Externally, 3.0 is going to be considered a bigger deal than 2.12.0.[6]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png I suggest that we zero-pad the minor release digit after 3.0.0 so we have 3.02, 3.04 etc. to reduce confusion if we reach double digits.[7]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png many computer systems sort file names in ascii order, many people don't seem to pay careful attention to where the decimal points are placed, etc. Once we clear past the 2.10, 2.12, etc. series, I'd like to go back to keeping things single digits in the major and minor version numbers and when we run out of a single digits bump up the major number (so 3.8.x -> 4.0.x). Number are numbers, but this one confused a lot more people than I expected it would or should so maybe it's good to be sensitive to that after we clear the 2.x series of versions.[8]
— Curtis Olson
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png That sounds OK to me, as it would imply a full release every 2.5 years, give a clear flag ahead of time when we're nearing a major release, and save having these discussions in the future. For reference, with the current plan there will be 4 years between 2.0.0 (Feb 2010) was and 3.0.0 (Feb 2014). [9]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png I've set the version files on 'next' to be 2.99, on the assumption the next release will be 3.0 as discussed.[10]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png

Backwards Compatibility:

Cquote1.png I think I sensible step in that case is to keep 3.0 as backward compatible (in terms of Aircraft APIs) with 2.12 as possible, which mostly means my resisting the urge to clean up legacy stuff :)

Obviously it's tricky to offer a 100% guarantee, but I don't have anything planned for 3.0 that will require aircraft changes - I'm sure new technologies such as state machines, knob/slider animations and tooltips will mature and gain some new features but hopefully aircraft developers will be able to work

against 2.12 with confidence that things will work the same in 3.0[11]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png It's a bit tricky because I haven't had much feedback from aircraft developers about the new APIs (since they aren't in 2.10), but once 2.12 ships we would want to keep them compatible, so fingers crossed the current design is sensible [12]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png

2.10

!!! NOTE: None of these issues have been incorporated into the release plan yet !!!

  • FlightGear Core related :
    • a number of users reported segfaults related to the new flight recorder system [30] [31]
    • the download & compile script in fgmeta should be updated for each release [32]
    • Thumbs up icon It is great news if you are able to crank out full installers right from Jenkins. That will save me a bunch of downloading and hours of uploading for every new release candidate [33].
    • But it might be a good idea to create a script that will distribute the new builds to the various mirrors. That way I'm less likely to throttle the build server to 10k/sec [34]
    • we could also automatically seed them in BitTorrent, on a Linux box and use "btmakemetafile" which I use here to generate those update packages on the tracker [35]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: perform a sync with JSBSim sources before the feature freeze Hourglass icon [36].
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: decide early on if/when navdata can be updated Hourglass icon [37]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: merge requests that didn't make it into the previous release should probably be handled early during the upcoming release cycle Hourglass icon
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: distro-specific repositories should probably be updated, too Hourglass icon [38]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: the "FlightGear & friends" SuseStudio images should probably be also updated for each release cycle Hourglass icon [39]
    • every now and then, people raise the issue of the major/minor version numbering scheme being a little confusing to people not familiar with software development, thinking that 2.8 must be newer/better/more recent than 2.11 - using code names or release dates instead was suggested [40]
    • there are usually reviews posted on blogs, forums etc after each release - we should specifically collect links to those and evaluate all opinions [41] [42]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: the release plan should be augmented for the sub-release procedures Hourglass icon [43]
    • there were a number of navcache/SQLite related issues reported via the issue tracker and the forum/devel list [44] [45] [46]
    • a little irritation/frustration was caused due to the conflicting review statements concerning the new radio propagation code [47] [48] [49] - some of this boiled down to coding style related issues, highlighting the fact that different core developers have different "coding styles" and requirements when reviewing merge requests, because we still lack an official "FlightGear coding style guide" [50]
    • according to Windows users, the installer created by jenkins could use some optimizations [51]
    • a number of Windows7/Windows8 users reported issues that needed a "force 32/64 bit" workaround during startup [52][53][54]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: new GUI widgets, new fgcommands and new Nasal APIs should ideally be documented prior the release, at least through updated README files, preferably also through the wiki Hourglass icon


  • Better bug reports and troubleshooting:
    • show HLA/OpenRTI availability Tick icon Fixed since 2.11+ [55]
    • add a string property with list of startup arguments used by the user, for use in the about dialog
    • add a property specifying if the binary is 32/64 bit for use in the about dialog (to check if segfaults are related to 32bit RAM limits)
    • add a property specifying the CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE variable used during compilation, for use in the about dialog (debug, release, RelWithDbgInfo) [56]
    • show the threading mode in use in the about dialog
    • show average frame rate and frame spacing in about dialog
    • add a property specifying how much physical RAM is detected (to see if people are running out of RAM) [57]
    • is there a portable ARB/WGL extension to determine the amount of dedicated VRAM available ?
    • try to detect Intel GPUs and Mesa drivers ? (some of the more common issues were related to Intel/Mesa)


  • Changelog / Release Announcement:
    • Thumbs up icon Walking through the list of "lessons learned" as part of the "Upcoming release" announcement was useful [58]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: Probably it would be even better to directly process all "lessons learned" items and improve the release plan after each release accordingly Hourglass icon
    • To get to the 3.0 goal sometime in the near future, it's probably a good idea to create a backlog of open items in the wiki and link the release plan document to that. As usual, we don't have to be perfect for a new major release number. But the new features being the reason for the new major number should work reasonably correct. [59] (also see Category:Developer Plans)
    • Thumbs up icon Posting the link to the changelog for the upcoming release helped writing the changelog early, this should also be done for the Hardware Recommendations and Notebooks known to run FlightGear pages probably?
    • Thumbs up icon The changelog can be easily written by using "git log", searching the issue tracker and by going through the last 6 newsletters published since the previous release. It might make sense to explicitly add a "ChangeLog" message to important commits, so that the Changelog can be compiled more easily ?
    • Alternatively, request developers to add major changes also to $FG_SRC/ChangeLog again (last updated in 2001)?
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: for the web-based release announcement, it would be helpful to have screen shots or even youtube videos to demonstrate new features - get the community involved EARLY Hourglass icon
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: it may make sense to also allow artwork contributors to contribute new splash screen images for use in the upcoming release. The screen shot contest should provide plenty of options Hourglass icon [60].
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: a screenshot/banner contest should be held early on, so that we can use the images for our promo work-NOT after the release Hourglass icon [61]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: for the changelog we should early on invite volunteers to help translate it, useful for the release promotion Hourglass icon
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: having dedicated promo videos sounds like a good idea Hourglass icon , see [62] Howto:Creating FlightGear Promo Videos
    • The RC announcement should also contain links to 1) the issue tracker and 2) the RC subforum [63]
    • Using wiki tagging, we could ensure that we can also tag our wiki documentation after each release, so that we can provide older versions of our docs for old FG versions [64]
    • various files in $FG_ROOT haven't been updated in YEARS, either update them in the future, or just get rid of them: THANKS, NEWS, ChangeLog etc
  • Shaders:
    • the ATI viewport hack didn't seem enabled in the RCs, as reported by a number of users on the forum [65]
    • the ATI viewport hack should only be enabled by default if ATI/AMD hardware is detected [66] [67][68]
    • we should probably try to detect if software emulated OpenGL is in use (i.e. using Mesa) and show a corresponding warning [69]
    • texture compression should be disabled by default [70] [71] [72] [73] [74]
    • Thumbs up icon lowering the default shader level to 1 improved compatibility for older/underpowered systems [75]
    • but there were still many users reporting issues like crashes/segfaults during startup, that seemed affected by changing graphics settings [76]
    • we should make sure that the default shader level (and related shaders!) works for all common setups, including ATI/AMD cards (Mac!) and Intel GPUs
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: GLSL shaders and effects should be treated like core code, and should be tested on different platforms before being enabled by default (i.e. signed-off by people using NVIDIA, ATI/AMD, Intel) Hourglass icon [77]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: modified shaders should be tested with other shader-related features to prevent breakage Hourglass icon [78] (there might be a way to automate this a litle by catching GLSL compiler errors?)
    • to address all the intel GPU related issues, we may want to show an info dialog on computers where /sim/rendering/gl-vendor contains "intel" as a substring and provide an option to disable all shaders [79]
    • we probably need a separate article detailing GLSL coding requirements to ensure that portable constructs are used [80] so that problematic shaders are not just identified at the end of the release cycle
  • Installer:
    • The installer should be updated to show a warning regarding TerraSync update time [81]
    • When Flightgear releases a new version, can the staff create a way for the average computer users to install a new version without doing anything to the old version but still use the terrain files from the older version? [82]
    • I believe Fred intentionally chose to use the same registry key from one version to the next. Thus if you install a new version over the top of an existing version it will end up in the same path under C:\<PF> [83]


  • FGData related (Base Package):
    • accessibility of README files in $FG_ROOT/Docs should be improved for our Win/Mac users [84] Tick icon Fixed since 2.11+ (by Stuart)
    • aircraft included in the base package should not require DDS support [85]
    • a bunch of Intel GPU related issues were tracked down to be related to texture dimensions beyond 512x512 not being supported, suggested workarounds are mentioned at [86]
    • "Funny how the 172P doesn't have it (crash detection via limits.nas). It is something like a default aircraft for the sim, isn't it? Which aircraft are considered the most "finished"?" [87]
    • " I'm a bit confused by all the aircraft models in various stages of completion. Even the install package comes with some below-par and alpha stage models. Is there a compiled list of aircraft that are considered "well done"?" [88]
    • The default set of airplanes in FG should be the absolute best of the best, simply because that's what a new user is going to be exposed to for their first time. [89]
    • Language files should be synced between English and other languages, so translators can work on them before the release ;-)
    • the nasal_api_doc.py script in $FG_SRC/scripts/python should be run as part of the release process, to create an updated doc file for $FG_ROOT/Docs and ship it with each release [90]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: New/updated Nasal scripts contributed to the base package should be checked to properly support important features like simulator reset, this also applies to Nasal scripts used by aircraft, Nasal scripts that fail these criteria, end up breaking existing features! Hourglass icon [91] (also see Release:Aircraft Selection Criteria)
    • Thumbs up icon regarding aircraft included in the release: "I must stress usefulness of the Autostart feature, present in most aircraft not running at startup. It keeps frustration away from those who just want to enjoy the flight . (Please note that I actually agree with aircraft being shut down at startup, as long as autostart is present, or the starting procedure is trivially doable by just trying what you see in the cockpit.) " [92] (also see Release:Aircraft Selection Criteria)
    • Thumbs up icon also, it would apparently make sense to provide tutorials for the default aircraft: "At first startup, I noticed the "Need help? use help->tutorials" message, and because I had no idea how to start up the plane (it would be just plain try and fail, than try something else), I did just that and started some basic tutorials. I wouldn't say going through the tutorials was frustrating, but they were quite boring and I was eager to get in the air as soon as possible." [93] (also see Release:Aircraft Selection Criteria)
    • "I discovered however, that there can be some problems on Linux about the planes (eg. some versions of the L39 Albatros undergoing several improvements lately). The problems can be caused by Linux being case sensitive about file paths (Windows is not), and I suspect, more models could suffer from some developers not knowing that. It's easy to fix if you know about the problem, but it would better be done on the developer side, as you never know if the smoke is just not implemented or missing due to this. Not to mention how lengthy it would be to go through more aircraft..." [94]
    • Docs: Relevant FlightGear paths should ideally not be "hard-coded" in the manual, but rather also configured via the build system, i.e. using cmake, so that the FG/SG cmake configuration can be shared, to automatically update the correct paths without requiring manual maintenance [95]
  • Usability:
    • the huge number of ads placed on the official website, and the non-intuitive layout of the website caused quite some irritation, not only among new users, but also among seasoned long-time contributors - flightgear.org has been repeatedly described as leaving the impression of even being a "scam" [96] [97]
    • Thumbs down icon A little downside is how the FGcom is done as a standalone program just cooperating with FG itself. It took me some fiddling with the settings for about two hours to get it working, but again installation was simply done from repos (FGcom and than FGcomGui as well). [98] (this is planned [99]) Tick icon Fixed since 2.99+
    • Thumbs down icon Most likely because of the Intel graphics, I suffered for a long time from a problem with aircraft models (and some ground textures too) being black or missing some parts (see my post in an older thread complaining about similar problem). I solved it by adding a command line option turning off texture compression. [100] (also see Release:Aircraft Selection Criteria)
    • We should probably add a new menu to the menubar for our online resources (wiki, forum, issue tracker, FAQ) so that people more easily find important resources just by selecting them from a menu.
  • Release Candidates:
    • a number of users reported crashes, for better debugging support, consider linking in Google BreakPad (cross platform stack traces) [101]
    • Release Candidates should probably have a higher default logging level while writing everything to a log file that can be easily shared via the issue tracker/forums, so that end users can provide better bug reports.
    • some users reported "OpenGL out of memory" and "out of space" errors when testing the RCs, we may want to link in a leak detector library or simply add BoehmGC - which is used by Mozilla to track leaking subsystems (a runtime log is created and dumped at process termination), that way non-developers could provide better leak reports. [102] [103] [104]
    • How about having a test run a week or two in advance, just to make sure we can indeed produce release installers for Win+Mac - and then release the first RC on December 17th/18th or 19th [105]
    • We've already got a fairly extensive lead-in time for the release. More testers on more platforms would seem to be the answer. Perhaps we should advertize for testers of those platforms that aren't adequately covered by developers running git? Making a complete package available, not just the binaries would help, as testers wouldn't need to be git-aware. [106]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: The main area to improve is to distribute release candidates for all platforms earlier - preferably starting immediately after the freeze. That would already give us more time for testing - without extending the actual freeze period. Hourglass icon [107]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: aircraft packages should be prepared prior to the official release date: "For the 2.8 release I didn't start making aircraft download packages (or uploading them to the ftp servers) until after the official release date which was a mistake" Hourglass icon [108]
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: RC's should probably be built with Built-in Profiler support enabled Hourglass icon [109].
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: When releasing RC's do not limit them to Win/Mac binaries, but also create source snapshots so that distros can already work on the next package versions. Hourglass icon
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: For RC's it might make sense to distribute binaries with debugging symbols included Hourglass icon and profiling support enabled, so that people can more easily provide useful bug reports, or even backtraces.
    • Also, many end users still prefer using the forum for making bug reports and don't use the issue tracker - it might help to add a link (button) to the issue tracker to the about dialog or maybe even directly to the help menu ("Report an issue") (same for wiki/troubleshooting/faq ?)
    • IMPROVE RELEASE PLAN: it might make sense to give wider exposure to our RCs, i.e. via the newsletter - possibly by adjusting the release schedule Hourglass icon
    • actually, it would even seem better to use our Release promotion checklist to send out an "Upcoming Release" announcement 4-6 weeks prior to the actual release, so that all the flightsim websites can notify their users to participate in RC beta testing.
    • a number of forum users reported that the RC/release mirrors were a real bottleneck, and that downloading the 800MB RC installer would often take 2-3 hours (using torrents instead was suggested)
    • it also seemed that a number of users had issues related to their browser corrupting the huge image download [110] (website should suggest to use a download manager instead!)
    • so reducing the size of the installer (i.e. base package) would seem like another good idea to give our RCs wider exposure, for example by focusing only on 2-3 aircraft
    • certain reported issues were really tricky to reproduce, we may want to provide an option to export crucial runtime settings to an XML file that can be easily shared with other testers/developers, or even extend the new flight recorder/replay tape system accordingly [111]
    • it might be good if the forum release-candidates announcement mentions that tests and bug-reports should be done with a clean install of the release-candidate, with no third-party data used in tests.
  • Build related:
  • A normal Linux user has practically no chance to get last stable on his box running if it isn't in his distro - a normal Windows user gets everything nice and streamlined. [112]
  • According to the issue tracker there were 3-5 different contributors who provided C++ patches that didn't end up reviewed/merged, which caused some irritation.

2.8

2.6

  • Thumbs up icon feature freeze in general
    helped a lot during release management. Kept the commit traffic low and thus helped identifying those commits required to pick into the release.
  • Thumbs down icon feature freeze for aircraft
    Technically, a feature freeze for aircraft is not necessary as long as this aircraft is not part of the base distribution and no common parts are affected. If it's guaranteed that the changes remain in FGDATA/Aircraft/MyAircraft and no other files are touched, these updates should be OK up to shortly before the release.
  • Thumbs down icon switching to a new version of supporting libraries like OSG.
    The move to OSG 3.x introduced some major issues. If at all possible, switch to a new library early in the development cycle.
  • Thumbs down icon manual creation of release candidates and the release binaries
    It's preferable to have equal numbers for release candidates for all O/S and probably a git-tag for each candidate.
  • Thumbs down icon release date/time frame
    It took several days to release all the subparts. Might be better to upload all files and pages to hidden folders and publish them all at once (or at least within a couple of hours). That'll have several advantages:
    • no big difference between releases for the various OS.
    • the website will switch to the new release state quickly. With 2.6.0, the aircraft page was published before the setup. The release announcement was published even later.
References
  1. Stuart Buchanan (Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:29:32 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] 2.12 is branched.
  2. James Turner (Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:52:59 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] 2.12 is branched.
  3. Geoff McLane (Wed, 21 Aug 2013 10:04:18 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] 2.12 is branched.
  4. James Turner (Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:15:00 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  5. James Turner (Mon, 24 Jun 2013 14:15:00 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  6. Stuart Buchanan (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:48:56 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  7. Stuart Buchanan (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:48:56 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  8. Curtis Olson (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:59:08 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  9. Stuart Buchanan (Mon, 08 Jul 2013 14:42:16 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  10. James Turner (Wed, 17 Jul 2013 12:39:56 -0700). [Flightgear-devel] 2.12 is branched.
  11. James Turner (Wed, 26 Jun 2013 02:49:00 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  12. James Turner (Wed, 26 Jun 2013 02:49:00 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.