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Jono  
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 More options Jul 2, 7:52 pm
From: Jono <jdica...@mozilla.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 16:52:18 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 2 2009 7:52 pm
Subject: Pushing back the release?
Hey everybody,
Software is hard.
I feel bad to even suggest this after how hard all the Ubiquity
contributors have been working towards this release over the past few
weeks, but I am thinking about pushing the 0.5 release back a couple
more weeks, until I have returned from my trip.  I just got done
talking to Atul and he strongly suggested doing so, for the following
reasons:

1. The server-side components (bug reporter, command search engine,
etc) are not anywhere near ready.  I've been working on them all day
and discovered that the job is much, much bigger than I thought.  I
thought it was going to be a one-day thing but it looks more like we
will have to seriously rethink the server infrastructure if we want to
offer bug reporting and command search services to our users.

2. Support:  After we release 0.5 onto addons.mozilla.com, since it is
such a big change to how ubiquity works, there is bound to be a huge
influx of users with support requests, maybe more serious bugs
discovered, etc.  This would be happening while I was gone and not
able to help with any of the support work.  Leaving the users hanging
with new problems due to 0.5 might be a worse thing to do to them than
making them wait another couple of weeks to get 0.5.

3. Features: If we push it back, we will have time to try to put in
some of the features we cut out:  Suggestion memory, provider-plugin
arguments, and most of all, asynchronous noun-first suggestion (in a
way that doesn't count as a DDOS attack on Yelp).

So, if we push it back, then we'll be able to do a more polished
release, with the server-side components working, and at a time when
I'll be available to help with the support and bug fixing and the
inevitable patches that will be needed.

This isn't just my decision, though.  What does everybody else think
of pushing the release back?
--Jono


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Jono  
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 More options Jul 2, 8:02 pm
From: Jono <jdica...@mozilla.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:02:15 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 2 2009 8:02 pm
Subject: Re: Pushing back the release?
P.S.
I think we should keep releasing 0.5pre versions periodically during
the next three weeks.  Aza will take care of organizing that effort.
--Jono


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Brandon Pung  
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 More options Jul 2, 8:03 pm
From: Brandon Pung <bp...@mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 17:03:40 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 2 2009 8:03 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?

I agree with the decision to push back the release until Jono's return from
his trip, for the same reasons Jono has described. I was listening in on the
conversation with Atul and it seems like the logical choice. Jono being gone
for the whole support phase following the release would be pretty bad, and
coupled with the server-side problems I think we need to push it back. On a
side note, with this extra time I'm excited about the possibility of getting
noun first suggestions into 0.5 in a way that's more reflective of what we
were advertising with the 0.5pre blog posts and so forth, though modified to
avoid DDOS attacks of course =)

-Brandon

--
Brandon James Pung
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Class of 2010
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
828.777.8640 | bp...@mit.edu

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Jono  
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 More options Jul 2, 9:08 pm
From: Jono <jdica...@mozilla.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 18:08:38 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 2 2009 9:08 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?
How about we release Tuesday?  Mitcho points out the following reasons
we should release after all:

1. if we push it back we will be letting down all the people who have
already blogged/written/read about the 0.5 release
2. the XPI itself is ready
3. The server components are not ready, but 0.5 without bug reporter /
herd is at least not any worse than 0.1.8 without bug reporter/herd
4. The rest of the community can handle support without me ;-)
5. Getting people onto 0.5 will reduce the load on the ubiquity.mozilla.com.

We should replace the herd and bug reporter pages with notifications
that tell users those services are down for repair, and then focus on
getting them working after the 0.5 release is out.

Atul and Aza have agreed to manage the release while I'm gone.
--Jono


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Jono  
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 More options Jul 2, 9:09 pm
From: Jono <jdica...@mozilla.com>
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 2009 18:09:51 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 2 2009 9:09 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?
P.S. remember that if upgrading to 0.5 breaks a user's favorite
third-party command, they can always go back to parser 1 using the
Settings page.
(Anybody doing support should keep this in mind as it will be a common
complaint.)
--Jono


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Discussion subject changed to "[ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?" by mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine)
mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine)  
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 More options Jul 3, 12:19 pm
From: "mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine)" <mit...@mitcho.com>
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 01:19:47 +0900
Local: Fri, Jul 3 2009 12:19 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiquity-core] Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?
As Jono already mentioned a number of the reasons I gave to strongly  
push for a release today, it suffices to say that I agree whole-
heartedly with Blair. Amen.

I'm fine with a Tuesday release, but we should make it a firm  
commitment and we should make it crystal clear on trac and/or the list  
(ideally both) *EXACTLY* what the blockers are that we are up against  
(if any).

m

--
mitcho (Michael 芳貴 Erlewine)
mit...@mitcho.com
http://mitcho.com/
linguist, coder, teacher

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Brandon Pung  
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 More options Jul 6, 7:33 pm
From: Brandon Pung <bp...@mit.edu>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 16:33:49 -0700
Local: Mon, Jul 6 2009 7:33 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiquity-core] Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?

Hi everybody,

Aza, Atul, and I just had a lengthy conversation about the release plans for
tomorrow, and we have decided to somewhat tweak the way we are doing this
release. Ubiquity 0.5 will still be released tomorrow, but it will be
released as a separate entity from 0.1.8, and will be called Ubiquity.Next
or something along those lines. It will be on addons.mozilla.org under this
separate name, so both 0.1.8 and 0.5 will be available there. The two
versions of Ubiquity will be kept separate until 0.5 is in a state that we
are ready to push on to all of our ~400,000 users. The requirements for this
merge will be something like:

1) Have the top x percent of 3rd party commands converted to Parser 2 format
2) Fix the network call problem in a way that allows us to re-enable async
network calls for noun first suggestions (through server-side caching or
other means)
3) Resolve bugs by design that will surely be identified as we get a bunch
of new users on Ubiquity.Next

The reason we do not want to force everyone to upgrade to 0.5 at this point
is because the benefits of 0.5 in it's current state don't necessarily
outweigh the negative changes for many of our users. With the async
suggestions basically disabled for noun first suggestions, the biggest
positive changes made between 0.1.8 and 0.5 are the more sophisticated
parser, resulting in the removal of hyphens, and internationalization. While
this stuff is very cool, and moving in the right direction, 0.5 breaks all
3rd party commands and also breaks some user habits (like the way delimiters
force you to type "weather near boston", whereas in 0.1.8 you can just type
"weather boston"). Breaking user habits is ok if the positive gains outweigh
the necessary changes in behavior. We think that 0.1.8 and 0.5 should be
kept separate until it is clear that 0.5 is a valuable upgrade to nearly all
of our users, which will be true when the requirements listed above are
fulfilled. While this is a labs project, we also have hundreds of thousands
of users who depend on Ubiquity to make their computing lives easier, so we
need to be cautious about pushing major changes on everybody.

Aza will be creating a screencast further describing the reason for
maintaining the two separate extensions soon. How does this sound to
everyone? Any questions or concerns?

-Brandon

On Sat, Jul 4, 2009 at 2:54 PM, Fernando Takai <fernando.ta...@gmail.com>wrote:

--
Brandon James Pung
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Class of 2010
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer
...

read more »


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Discussion subject changed to "Pushing back the release?" by Heather
Heather  
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 More options Jul 6, 8:40 pm
From: Heather <heatherkofkeeg...@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2009 17:40:28 -0700 (PDT)
Local: Mon, Jul 6 2009 8:40 pm
Subject: Re: [ubiq i18n] Re: Pushing back the release?
I really like this idea and think it will make the end user experience
much smoother for english language users who are mostly interested in
Ubiquity as a productivity enhancer.  I also have a few concerns.

1. I think it is important that we figure out a way to differentiate
0.1.8 from Ubiquity.Next for purposes of support/command feeds/
documentation.  I think the documentation needs some major cleanup -
some of which I am willing to do tonight if we can come up with a good
way to explain the differences.  Anyone have any suggestions about the
best way to do this?  This means maintaining two sets of user
documentation and two sets of command developer documentation.

2.  In terms of command developers, is there any easy way we can make
Ubiquity handle command feeds for both versions?  We have some
developers that have done great work getting their commands ready for
Parser2, and we're making their lives harder temporarily by making
them maintain two versions of their commands.  It would be nice if
Ubiquity could handle subscribing to one feed for 0.1 and one feed for
0.5 without having to make links to both.

3. Another limitation of this approach is it weakens "ubiquity the
platform" a little in terms of being easy to use and understand, since
the Parser1 documentation is not so good right now (the auto generated
docs, including the command API, are generated from the source tip),
and as a community we'll need to expect some people developing for
Parser1 and some for Parser2.  I think most of this concern is
remedied by urging people interested in command development to use 0.5
and develop for Parser2.

4. It's a little late to do this this time around, but I think in
general the core development team should think about maintaining a
release trunk and a beta branch (haha, i'm using developer words,
probably incorrectly).  Right now maintaining 0.1.8 is actually fairly
difficult if I understand correctly.  I think 0.1.8 is fairly stable,
but it has a few bugs that would be worth fixing if we're going to
keep it out there.  I think it's worth having a conversation about how
we're going to handle ubiquity the product vs. ubiquity the experiment
in the future, but I think this idea is a step in the right direction.

5. I think this gives us a great opportunity to think about how to
best engineer the herd to smooth over the upgrade issues of when 0.5
is pushed to be the "used by everybody" version.  If the herd is
parser1/parser2 aware, then we can use it to measure how many 3rd
party commands have been ported to parser2 and when people make the
switch, they can use the herd to actually find commands, which would
be pretty sweet!  Fern has done some awesome work on the Herd, but I
think a complete rewrite will require some developer resources that
Ubiquity just doesn't have right now.

I think that's about it.

Heather

On Jul 6, 7:33 pm, Brandon Pung <bp...@mit.edu> wrote:

...

read more »


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