User:Martinlanghoff/F14 release cycle thoughts

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Goals

The list below has too many things! Will obviously have to be cut :-)

We definitely need some headline features. It is our job to figure out which ones are reachable.

  • Features from S0.90 -- pick some to polished, turned into headline features
  • Cherry pick from Dextrose - pick some to polish ?
  • Unify Read/GetBooks/etc?
  • Video accel, rotation, better skype+flash compat - external: jnettlet
  • Antitheft -- clock control - external: mitch
  • Upgrade - olpc-update TLC
  • XS integration - backup/restore
  • Record performance
  • Disk resize & fsck during boot -- needs bootanim fixes - dsd , martin
  • Robotics -- seems we can push to completion/polish existing efforts
  • Activity startup time
  • Memory leaks of idle Sugar (neighbourhood view?)
  • Auto-Save&Quit background activities on memory pressure (android-style...)

Needs attention

Some things we know will need work.

  • Ubifs -- expands upgrade testing matrix
  • Presence service refactor -- is it complete? needs testing
  • Metacity
  • Toolbar changes needs to be finish in all core activities
  • Activity Updater needs an OLPC-wiki 'microformat' backend (maybe Dextrose team has done it?)
  • Port any pending patches from 0.84
  • Activities bindings -- Py 2.6 vs Py 2.7 -- got to update them, also need to give activity authors reasonable way to prep activities bundles that work on both F11 and F14 distros.

Milestones

Not sure at the moment if we want to publish "early" releases as we've done with 10.1.x . Software is not holding up HW production.

Instead, I am thinking of publishing "milestone" builds, for testers and enthusiasts but not recommended for deployments, and not supported. Then we can do something like

  1. Booting, sleep/resume, network, audio, video work -- this is where we are now (done by dsd)
  2. Activities start and work (perhaps to a limited extent), Sugar overall passes smoketest -- publish 'base milestone'.
    • As part of this -- review and merge bugfixes from Dextrose
    • Mini-freeze & test (2~ 3 days?).
  3. Develop towards the goals above -- at the end, publish 'alpha milestone'.
    • Review and merge features from Dextrose
  4. Work towards a final release
    • This follows the usual freeze model
    • Mini-freeze & test (2~ 3 days?).

The above stages need dates/timeframes of course.

What's coming in S 0.90

Prompted by Simon, I made a list of what's going to be new for our users.

From 0.86

  • Activity Toolbar redesign
  • Switch to metacity (do we?)
  • Flash activities
  • Tabs in Browse
  • Ad-hoc networking (already in 10.1.3)
  • Read epub support (already in 10.1.3)
  • Software Update -- changed?
  • Improved Accessibility (use of gtk+ widgets)
  • Keyboard settings -- do we need to hide these?
  • Home Favourites View Improvements
  • File transfer via Jabber
  • New Share button (part of new toolbar?)
  • Reordered the buddy menu items (already in 10.1.3)

From 0.88

  • GSM Modem (already in 10.1.3)
  • Better feedback during activity startup
  • New TurtleArt (already in 10.1.3)
  • Share Etoys Projects on Squeakland
  • Track user preferences for opening activities
  • Journal calls sync() (bugfix, already in 10.1.3 ? )

From 0.90

  • Remove presence service (big refactor)
  • Sugar ad-hoc network (already in 10.1.3 :-) )
  • Color selector in control panel
  • Spiral Home View
  • Journal ordering options (by size)
  • Etoys

Interesting items in Dextrose Release Notes

  • Intuitive resource monitoring
  • Journal backup/restore to removable devices / to XS
  • Improved GSM / 3G (?)
  • Tabbed browsing (?)
  • Virtual Keyboard
  • Journal repair
  • Fast switching between touchpad and pen-tablet modes
  • OLPC microformat support in activity-updater
  • Re-issue registration to XS
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