Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Adopt an ISO: Quantal Style

It's almost hard to believe, but the new cycle is starting to ramp up. In just over one week's time, we'll be putting out an alpha 1 iso for quantal! If you will remember last cycle, I began an adopt an iso campaign to help insure precise got the iso testing coverage it needed to be an awesome release. This cycle, that campaign will continue with an open call for folks to adopt an iso and help test it all cycle long. Instead of managing and updating all of our excellent testers myself via email, I am asking instead for you to subscribe to the iso your interested in adopting and helping to make sure it's in a ready state for each milestone release. Subscribing to the iso will alert you via email when there is a new build for you ready to test, so you don't need to watch the page or await an email from me. If you miss the email from me, you may of course contact me for personal interactions at anytime you wish :-)

Interested? Awesome! This wiki page should detail everything you need to get started. Specifically, you should ensure you subscribe to the testcases for the iso you wish. For example, if I am interested in Ubuntu Desktop i386, I would head over to this page. See that button at the bottom called subscribe? Hit it and you should be subscribed to new builds for that iso. Please note the subscription feature is a work in progress, and there is not (yet!) a management page for subscriptions. Additionally, there is no visual indication on the page that your subscription is active (contributions welcome, contact me if you know drupal and wish to help!). Please read the wiki page on ISO Testing for more information on confirming your subscription in the interim period.

Ok, great, so now your subscribed. There's just one piece left in making sure things go well for your iso. This cycle we are trying something new to help make the alpha, beta, final release process smoother for all of our iso's (and you!). We would like to have our adopters run the daily iso before we spin the first candidate for release. What this means for you is that the week before each milestone release date, go ahead and try testing out the daily version of the iso. Think of it as warm-up for the big day. After all, you don't want your iso to be the one causing the re-spin do you?

This schedule will come in handy. It shows the timeline for how and when we'll be undertaking this testing. I know it looks big and scary, but focus on just the first column called 'Community Testing'. See the week of May 31st with the 'Q-D' listed by it in the 'Community Testing' column? If you glance at the 'Legend' at the top you will notice that 'Q' stands for quantal, and 'D' stands for daily. You will also notice that the Alpha 1 release for quantal is schedule one week after. So our goal is to spend this week getting our iso's in shape for the first spins for Alpha 1. The good news is time spent now is respins saved later. Happier isos make happier users!

Before I close I do want to remind everyone that each cycle is a marathon. We spoke at UDS about burnout, and that is something to keep in mind. Pace yourself and share the work. We'll have a wonderful cycle together. As always, contact me if you need any help. Your response was overwhelming for ubuntu precise, let's keep going strong for quantal. Thanks for helping make ubuntu better for everyone!

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