Fedora 16 QA Retrospective

Introduction

This page is intended to gather feedback from the Fedora QA community on things that worked well and things that could have been better with the testing of Fedora 16. The feedback will be used as a basis for identifying areas for improvement for Fedora 16 testing. Any thoughts, big or small, are valuable. If someone already provided feedback similar to what you'd like to add, don't worry ... add your thoughts regardless.

For any questions or concerns, send mail to test@lists.fedoraproject.org.

Providing feedback

• Gwjasu - I like ____ about the new ____ process

Adding feedback is fairly straight forward. If you already have a Fedora account ...

1. Login to the wiki
2. Select [Edit] for the appropriate section below.
3. Add your feedback using the format:

   * ~~~ - I like ____ about the new ____ process

4. When done, Submit your changes

Anonymous

If you do not have a Fedora account, follow the instructions below to submit anonymous feedback. Please note, mediawiki records the IP address associated with any anonymous page edits.

1. Select the appropriate page for your feedback...
   • Something that worked well
   • Something that didn't work well
   • Anything on your QA wishlist
2. Add your feedback using the format:

   * ~~~ - I like ____ about the new ____ process

3. When done, Submit your changes

Feedback

Could have been better

1. jlaska - Pre-release acceptance - the Rawhide Acceptance milestones continue to sneak up on us ... and it takes a bit to get images lined up. It's better this release with twu owning the QA side of the process, but it still feels like there is more room for transparency/communication around the process.
2. jlaska - Alpha TC1 - Missed the Alpha-TC1 milestone by 1 week, little to no communication regarding status. With only two weeks Alpha ISO test time, losing 50% of time almost certainly results in a slip. See rel-eng ticket#4844 . None of the Alpha rel-eng release tickets have been filed at this time.
   • adamw - perhaps releng image compose SOP should require updating of ticket with progress info, especially when image compose / delivery is delayed?
3. jlaska - Alpha branch - Unclear when the F16 branch was completed as not all tasks in the Mass_Branching_SOP were completed. The SOP either needs to be followed or updated.
   • MirrorManager was not updated to add a fedora-16 repo tag, therefore, TC1 installations could not find a repository to install from (RHBZ #727428)
   • TC1 images were built with Version=16-Alpha.TC1 specified as the --version argument to pungi. This results in a file /.buildstamp in the install image with an incorrect version (Version=16-Alpha.TC1) that is used as the $releasever variable for yum. The net result is that there are no yum repos that match repo=16-Alpha.TC1&arch=x86_64. The version needs to be an integer, or MirrorManager redirects need to be established prior to compose.
   • The fedora-release package was not properly updated to include [fedora] with enabled=1. As a result, TC1 images included a fedora-release package that didn't enable the Fedora 16 repos.
   • The fedora-release package was not updated to include the Fedora 16 release name Verne. This is a minor issue, but results in login prompts claiming the system is Rawhide. Recommend updating (or creating) the existing Mass_Branching_SOP to document expected results when updating fedora-release
   • adamw - seems branching may not actually have been completed by time of TC1 delivery, even. Perhaps appropriate releng SOPs should be updated to clarify that branching - or at least some specified subset of branching tasks - must be completed before Alpha TC1 delivery

Recommendations

After enough time has been given for feedback, the QA team will discuss and make recommendations on changes to prioritize for Fedora 17. This section organizes and lists the recommendations.

In order to coordinate efforts, and measure effectiveness of recommendations, please record and track any action taken in the Fedora 17 roadmap in the QA TRAC instance.