Re: Bits from the Release Team - Kicking off Wheezy
On 28/04/11 at 20:45 +0200, Bernhard R. Link wrote:
> * Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@lucas-nussbaum.net> [110428 20:21]:
> > On 28/04/11 at 12:05 -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
> > > And at the same time, having a non-frozen rolling release available
> > > during freeze time could easily distract people from working on
> > > testing/frozen at all, because a shiny rolling release that they and
> > > some users can use is still available. I am unhappy during the current
> > > choke point of testing being frozen, but that choke point does serve as
> > > an incentive for the whole project to work in the same direction: toward
> > > actually getting a good stable release out.
> >
> > That's not true. It serves as an incentive for a large number of DDs to
> > just do something else until the freeze is over and they can start
> > working on their packages again. (easy to show by looking at the number
> > of distinct uploaders over time, for example).
>
> How can this number indicate anything like that?
>
> Having no or not much uploads in (late) freeze time is normal in my
> experience as the release is more important than showing stuff for the
> next + 1 release into experimental.
Eh? How do you fix stuff in the next release if you don't make uploads?
I'm not saying that the number of uploads should stay the same: it's
normal to see it going down during freezes, since there are less things
to change. However, if we think that DDs participate in RC bug fixing,
the number of distinct uploaders should not go down.
That's the number of distinct uploaders (according to Changed-By:) to unstable
for each month since 2008:
2008-01 | 555
2008-02 | 628
2008-03 | 625
2008-04 | 594
2008-05 | 567
2008-06 | 610
2008-07 | 646 <- lenny froze 30/07
2008-08 | 515
2008-09 | 434
2008-10 | 440
2008-11 | 362
2008-12 | 385
2009-01 | 397
2009-02 | 475 <- lenny released 14/02
2009-03 | 532
2009-04 | 508
2009-05 | 546
2009-06 | 508
2009-07 | 530
2009-08 | 609
2009-09 | 586
2009-10 | 572
2009-11 | 587
2009-12 | 587
2010-01 | 661
2010-02 | 599
2010-03 | 578
2010-04 | 620
2010-05 | 596
2010-06 | 548
2010-07 | 543
2010-08 | 507 <- squeeze frozen 06/08
2010-09 | 380
2010-10 | 403
2010-11 | 413
2010-12 | 337
2011-01 | 313
2011-02 | 510 <- squeeze released 06/08
2011-03 | 518
2011-04 | 560
One could argue that, even if you are involved in RC bug squashing, you might
not be making uploads that frequently, and that would explain why the number of
distinct uploaders is going down. So let's take a step backward:
Distinct uploaders to unstable from 01/01/2008 to 30/07/2008: 1229
Distinct uploaders to unstable from 30/07/2008 to 14/02/2008: 978 (lenny freeze)
Distinct uploaders to unstable from 06/02/2010 to 06/08/2010: 1187 (6 months before freeze)
Distinct uploaders to unstable from 06/08/2010 to 05/02/2011: 926 (squeeze freeze)
So, we are losing a large number of contributors (> 20%) during freezes. And
it's also possible that some of them don't come back (looking at the months
following freezes, it takes some time to reach the pre-freeze numbers).
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