Discussion about opening up the release process

[Ádám Rozmán]

Greetings Metal3 community!

As promised during our recent community meeting, I’m starting this thread to continue/start the discussion about opening up the release process. Based on the feedback we received, there are several points we should clarify and align on together.

The goal of this thread is to make sure that everyone interested in the release process — whether you’re directly involved or just curious — has visibility into how we plan and execute releases, and can share input on how to improve it.

Some of the areas we might want to discuss include:

• How we can make release progress and timelines more transparent
• How community members can participate or take ownership of specific release activities
• What kind of documentation or tooling could help make releases smoother

Your ideas, experiences, and suggestions are all welcome. Please feel free to jump in with comments or questions — this is meant to be an open, collaborative discussion.

Initial Proposal (as presented in the community meeting)

Here’s a quick summary of what we proposed to get started:

• Motivation behind opening up the release process
• Help keep releasing on schedule
• Make project more approachable and attract new people
• Follow example set by projects like Kubernetes and CAPI
• Get help with the release
• Weekly (non-mandatory) Release Team Meeting on Tuesdays at 14:00 UTC
• The meeting would cover:
• Checkup: Review of current release status and blockers
• Release: Coordination of ongoing or upcoming release tasks or doing the rellease in real time cooperatively
• Retrospective: Quick reflection on what worked well and what can be improv
• Specifying the role of the Lead and the Shadows
• Improvoing better doumentint the ways of working aroung the release documentation and the (pre)release task list (documenting how to update and when to update these)
• Creating official timeline and milestone strategy
• The original presentation made by Peppi can be found here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/173cNrAJaMOHGulNKlV8_f_ggsos9EqUOceBCKmBd4yM/edit?usp=sharing

There has been some feedback already on the last community meeting but I would like to avoid paraphrasing or missquoting anyone so please share your thought again so we can initiate a clean discussion.

Nothing is decides yet, every aspect of the process is up for discussion. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and shaping this process together with you all.

BR,
Adam Rozman

[Riccardo Pittau]

Hello everyone!

Thanks Peppi for the great presentation, and thanks Adam for the summary, I really appreciate the direction we're taking for the release process, and I hope I can contribute to improve it and make it as transparent as possible for the entire Metal3 community.

I have some concerns about the initial proposal, I think some aspects may actually go into the opposite direction of opening the release process, in particular adding yet another meeting, even if not mandatory, would not help attract more people to the release process, but drive them off.
No one likes more meetings :)

I strongly believe we should keep the release discussions in the current weekly community meeting, take advantage of that time to discuss the points in the initial proposal, that should not be limited to the release team (so only to be discussed during the release team meeting), but instead try to involve everyone directly.
- checkup; reviewing the current release status and blockers is very helpful to drive the community into the correct direction, and focus on the resolution of specific issues, asking for help to the community and not just the release team

- release; the coordination of upcoming release tasks should also be opened and tracked in the main meeting document to allow everyone in the community to understand how the release process works, ask questions, propose improvements, or share concerns; about coordinating an ongoing release I think having a dedicated thread or a temporary channel on slack may be more helpful than a weekly meeting, maybe driven by a "release checklist"

- retrospective; this is supposed to happen once after each release, and it's of great interest for everyone, not only the release team, we should just dedicate half or more the weekly meeting time right after a release to this topic

We should probably just remove the concept of release team entirely, and go with release-related roles inside the community.

I think we're going in the right direction there, having a "release lead" (and a backup!) role will help having a smoother process, same for the official timeline plus milestones.
Improving the documentation on workflows and tools used for the release process is fundamental for opening the release process to everyone.

I would really like to keep the discussion flowing and hear more opinions, hopefully also during the next weekly meeting.

Thanks!

Ciao
Riccardo

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