One of the things about the current developer portal that drives me absolutely mad is the fact that releases and their corresponding reviews have no direct connection. I spent a few hours a few months ago hacking code to form tenuous connections between things that should be pretty tightly connected.
Moving forward, this is going to change.
I opened up Bug 363524 to track a feature I intend to add to the new project management infrastructure. With this feature, I intend to connect a project’s release records directly to the corresponding review, and plan. In the process, I think we’ll manage to reduce the overall burden on projects, and make the presentation of this information far more consistent.
In short, the release records–which today consist only of a date, name, and a small number of URLs–will be expanded to include more information. Information that can be used to generate the release review documentation and a project plan will be included directly in the release record. Rather than sending me a document in some arbitrary format via email and waiting for me upload and link the document, project members can themselves create and post the review materials directly. Rather than entering the same information multiple times, in different places, and formats, it’s all done in one place.
I envision projects entering basic information about their upcoming releases very early in the release cycle. Perhaps even entering multiple future releases. During the release cycle, the basic information will evolve, much like a plan is supposed to evolves today. By the end of the release cycle, while preparing those final bits, project members finalize the documentation and click a “submit for review” button. From there, the PMC reviews the provided information and either sends it back with comments, or approves it. From there it goes public on RSS, Twitter, Blogs, and where-ever else we choose to publish.
It’s also a pretty natural fit to have community comments about a review actually connected to the review itself, rather than directed into a sea of other posts on the project forum. Though we could probably do both if that makes sense…
Anyway, your comments on Bug 363524 are most welcome.
