As John posted last night, Fedora 14 Alpha was declared ready for release next week. Although there was a one-week slip to handle the fact that our blocker list wasn’t clear, Fedora developers and testers in the community have worked hard together both to resolve the remaining issues and make sure that our Alpha would pass the release criteria. There were a number of developers who hopped in to fix things quickly to yield package builds that would clear the runway, so thanks to all of you guys.
I also wanted to take a moment to say how impressively the QA team has beefed up the definition of these criteria. Not only that, but the team continues to take opportunities to refine them whenever we hit a question that’s difficult to answer under the current criteria. We still can improve our effectiveness at turning the combination of the blocker bug list and the criteria into getting response from developers where needed, but that’s more of a shared issue. As with our criteria and our schedule, we continue to improve these processes in an iterative way, and openly to boot.
Here’s one place where everyone will be able to pitch in — making sure that any common issues in the Alpha are properly noted. We have a wiki page for common Fedora 14 issues, and it’s very important for us to keep it updated for all those trying out the pre-releases. If you’re in doubt whether it’s a common issue, that’s OK. There are some notes on that wiki page on how to add your issue:
- Add it yourself, if you have wiki access. Please follow the style and guidelines explained in the comments in the page source. (You’ll see them when you start to edit.)
- Or, add the CommonBugs keyword to the bug report. Someone from the QA team will then inspect the issue to determine whether the bug should be listed as a common bug. To expedite your request, add a comment to the bug that includes
- a summary of the problem
- any known workarounds
- an assessment on the impact to Fedora users
If in doubt, we’d rather see the issue than not. ?
The Alpha release is meant for advanced users and Fedora participants to download and test. It’s not code-complete, meaning a few things may be broken. We want and need your help to identify, report, and resolve these problems. As always, the best way to do that is to file bugs! Random blog entries, tweets/dents, and mail may be interesting, but to track the problems to resolution, bugs are the right way to go. We look forward to your participation as always — if you’re not already installing from the pre-release tree, you’ll be able to pick up the official images next Tuesday, August 24.
In summary, nice job to everyone involved, and I’m looking forward to switching a few systems here at home to F14 Alpha!