Proposal for target milestones

[Mark Côté]

At last Wednesday's Bugzilla meeting, when discussing remaining
blockers for Bugzilla 5.0, we discussed how we flag bugs for inclusion
into a given release.  At the moment, we use both the Target Milestone
and the whiteboard for this purpose.

The Target Milestone currently serves two purposes: flagging bugs we
think would be nice to include in a given release (the next one or a
future one), and flagging bugs that have been fixed (but not necessarily
flagged ahead of time) and will be included in the next version.  The
white board tag, e.g. [Roadmap: 5.0], is used to denote bugs that we
think *really* should be in that release.

This system may have worked well in the past, but in our current
development process, where we have a stable product and a small pool of
contributors, it's essentially backwards.  Since the number of new
features is relatively low, at least compared with earlier Bugzilla
versions, we are moving to a model in which we ship whatever we have
every 6 months or so, or if there's a really big or useful feature that
we want to get out.  Development of the latter tends to come from
features that are needed in site installations, such as Red Hat's or
Mozilla's.  Other commits tend to be smaller bug fixes that volunteers
sporadically contribute.  We end up with lots and lots of Target
Milestones that have no reasonable chance of being resolved and just get
moved from version to version after each release.

Thus I propose that our policy for using the Target Milestone be as follows:

* Bugs that are being actively worked on and are anticipated to be
finished before the next release, as well as bugs officially designated
as blockers, should have the Target Milestone set, and only to the next
anticipated release.

* Only the bug's assignee or a Bugzilla reviewer/approver should set or
unset the Target Milestone.

* As we currently do, bugs without a Target Milestone that are committed
before an upcoming release should set it after the patch is committed.

* We will stop using the [Roadmap: X] white board tag.

Everyone at the meeting was in agreement, but I want to turn it over to
the forum for any discussion before making it official.

Mark
-- 
Mark Côté
Assistant Project Lead, Bugzilla
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