ubuntu-phone team mailing list archive

[Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak <lukasz.zemczak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey Robert,

W dniu 14.08.2015 o 18:08, Robert Schroll pisze:
> Thanks for the explanation!
> 
> Just to make sure I've got it: devel isn't actually dangerous right now
> -- it's just not going to get any love until devel-proposed manages to
> stabilize.  rc-proposed is available, but under the "If it breaks, you
> get both halves" warranty.

Yes, that's more or less it. Also, devel-proposed generally gets much
less love now than before, as everyone is focusing on rc-proposed.

> I'm speaking from a position of complete ignorance here, but: Is there
> that much of a chance that an image that works on mako will fail on
> manta or flo?  I would assume that most of the driver issues have been
> worked out, and most of the updates for these machines would be "pure"
> software.  If so, what about promoting images for manta and flo once
> they've passed QA on mako?  Obviously you can't control for unknown
> unknowns, but it seems that this should be significantly safer than a
> -proposed channel.  Obviously, we'd make it clear that these images
> aren't guaranteed in the same way those for mako are, and maybe this
> should only happen for rc, not stable, but I think it would be a nice
> intermediate between the working-but-old devel and new-but-maybe-broken
> rc-proposed.
> 
> Or maybe I'm completely wrong.

Well... that's the *theory*, but in practice it's sadly a bit more
problematic ;) We had multiple and multiple cases where at some point
suddenly only one device stopped working after a change landed, or a
certain important feature being broken because of device-specifics. We
notice such issues with mako and krillin/arale - as an example one can
mention the recent case of the OTA-5 messaging and telephony regression
that was only affecting mako. We had to release a hotfix for that. And
that's not the first time something like that happened.

Just to be clear: I'm not saying that your proposition is wrong, just
want to mention what was the original rationale for not including all
the platforms in the rc/stable support list.

That being said, we discussed all this slightly in our landing team
meeting and also partially with the product team today. There is no
definite decision yet, but what we'll think of doing is actually
including at least flo to the list of community devices we'll try
promoting on every main update. We won't be doing all the regression
tests on it, but do something similar to what we do for mako - make sure
that it passes sanity tests. So I suppose this way flo users would be
able to use the rc/stable channels for their convenience.

But as I said, we'll have to wait a bit for a final decision on that.

Cheers!

> 
> Thanks,
> Robert
> 
> 
> On Fri, Aug 14, 2015 at 4:26 AM, Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
> <lukasz.zemczak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> W dniu 14.08.2015 o 03:53, Robert Schroll pisze:
>>>  On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 2:14 PM, Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
>>>  <lukasz.zemczak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>  Please DO NOT use the devel/devel-proposed channels for your phones if
>>>>  not needed.
>>>
>>>  Perhaps then we should stop recommending devel for those wishing to
>>>  "track the latest development" on developer.ubunutu.com [1]?  Although
>>>  devel hasn't been updated in four months, so maybe that's supposed
>>> to be
>>>  self-evident.
>>>
>>
>> Although what is written there is partially true, I will try to update
>> it with more details so it's evident how the real situation looks like.
>>
>>>>   This means
>>>>  that all the feature development actually happens on the vivid-based
>>>>  channels, e.g. stable, rc and rc-proposed.
>>>
>>>  Neither stable or rc have images for manta or flo.  Should we be on
>>>  rc-proposed, or would it be better to stay on the (stale) devel
>>> channel?
>>>
>>
>> The concept was that flo and manta are supported for promotion into the
>> devel channels, while the rc set only focuses on the devices we have
>> time to support with full force. We didn't have time or resources to do
>> a devel promotion for a long time and now - and seeing the current state
>> of wily touch, I would suppose we won't have one in the nearest time.
>>
>> The main issue is of course time. With really limited resources we do
>> not have the man-power for taking care of so many devices. I think we
>> might need to re-visit which channels should be recommended and
>> supported for the flo and manta devices anyway.
>>
>> What would I propose? I wouldn't want to give wrong hints here as I have
>> no idea what's the state of flo on rc-proposed, but that channel at
>> least gets developer focus. This developer focus is mainly for krillin
>> arale and mako, but still better than nothing.
>>
>>>>  This might sound a bit strong but we simply don't want users to get
>>>> the
>>>>  wrong impression by using the wrong channels.
>>>
>>>  When I asked four months ago about flo, I was specifically told to use
>>>  devel.  Was that wrong at the time, or did things change?  Was there an
>>>  announcement of the change?  If this is such a concern, the
>>>  documentation [1] really ought to be updated.
>>>
>>
>> The situation with flo and manta is a bit more complicated. The warning
>> I sent out in my landing e-mail was more about the many stories of users
>> switching their mako, arale and krillin devices to devel-proposed to get
>> 'the latest of the latest', wheres this in this channel it's not
>> entirely true.
>>
>> All in all - the flo and manta situations need to be resolved. I will
>> bring it up with the product team and see what we can do about the
>> current situation.
>>
>>>  Robert
>>>
>>>  [1]
>>>  
>>> https://developer.ubuntu.com/en/start/ubuntu-for-devices/image-channels/,
>>> section
>>>  "Channel selection guide"
>>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -- 
>> Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
>>  Foundations Team
>>  lukasz.zemczak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>  www.canonical.com
> 


-- 
Łukasz 'sil2100' Zemczak
 Foundations Team
 lukasz.zemczak@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
 www.canonical.com