17:13:24 #startmeeting Designing the Update Experience 17:13:24 Meeting started Sat Dec 5 17:13:24 2009 UTC. The chair is notting. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot. 17:13:24 Useful Commands: #action #agreed #halp #info #idea #link #topic. 17:13:39 #topic Designing the Update Experience - http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards/UpdateExperience 17:14:29 Problems: we have too many updates, at too low a level for most users. (wget? what's wget, and why am I running it?) 17:15:08 is meeting bot recording this 17:15:10 uncoordinated: automake was upgraded in an older stable release, which affected the build process for other packages, including other security updates 17:16:09 coordination mechanism is just a mailing list 17:17:04 zodbot start meeting 17:17:14 zodbot help 17:17:14 mizmo: (help [] []) -- This command gives a useful description of what does. is only necessary if the command is in more than one plugin. 17:17:23 zodbot meeting help 17:17:40 jesse signs everything that is built for updates-testing 17:17:59 then he starts a push process which creates new updates repos for updates-testing, updates-release for f10, f11, f12... long and time-consuming that takes about a day to do everything 17:18:04 pushes to repos, pushes to near master... 17:18:10 syncs out and updates all the bug flags in bodhi 17:18:18 pkg kit checks by default one time a day 17:19:17 zodbot #startmeeting 17:19:22 updates are done ad-hoc 17:20:10 updates aren't really tested as a unit, even though they're pushed as a unit 17:20:56 notting: do you know if zodbot is recording? 17:21:13 mizmo: it should be, it said it was. 17:21:16 oh okay 17:21:56 mizmo: (meeting's already started, yes) 17:23:04 other OSes: MacOS X has 'system updates' (could be X, libc, kernel, cocoa), and 'application updates' (itunes, safari, firefox, etc.) 17:23:41 #idea walters - we know, as a desktop, what apps people run. we can do categorization with that data 17:25:27 (we start to go through the suggestions on the wiki page now) 17:28:00 for all releases: 17:28:18 - system updates should be tested as a single unit, and presented to the user as such 17:28:39 - system updates must not break any application we define as critical (firefox), or any application as all 17:28:50 note: application here is 'user-visible application' 17:30:45 - application updates should appear as a single update 'firefox update' (which includes the varous dependent things) 17:31:20 - by batching these, we can use it as a form of versioning. 'Fedora 12.1' or similar 17:33:21 - apps should not do their own updates (such as firefox does on windows) 17:34:49 - why do i have to do updates while I'm using the system? 17:37:52 stickster: what about security updates? 17:38:08 they can still be handled separately; they are normally still scheduled, etc. 17:40:10 more discussion on why apps doing their own updates is bad, and why we should use the system mechanism 17:40:23 - limiting number of reboots & restarts 17:40:31 - offers the user a way to opt out of certain app updates 17:41:01 - can better test combinations 17:41:02 etc. 17:42:15 We want to be able to queue/defer updates to currently running software 17:42:52 should download updates in the background 17:43:32 mizmo - should define some portion of the data reserved for update data, cleaned when done 17:43:45 lmacken - should be able to define how we want to do updates at install/firstboot time 17:44:17 also special mode for updates to occur in -like on the PS3hehe 17:45:08 want to be able to install updates that require restarting at shutdown time 17:46:49 walters - one issue with that is shutdown/etc. is the time when you're likely to run out of battery 17:47:17 ... further refinement of these ideas for stable releases ... 17:47:50 - batched updates should just occur once a week at most. perhaps once a month? 17:48:00 - 'new release tuesday' 17:48:39 - system updates should a) fix critical bugs b) security vulnerabilities c) hardware enablement 17:51:08 stickster - we may have another class of packages that aren't system tools, but aren't full end-user apps. 17:52:17 system updates should be able to run autonomously, and not deferred except for a very short time 17:52:25 app updates may be deferred or ignored 17:54:20 ... some discussion of apps that bring in large library sets that nothing else uses. how do we handle this? 17:55:49 app updates can add new features, etc. if firefox breaks firefox, well, that's on firefox 17:57:28 need to do more testing of zero-day updates - how is a stable release relevant if it gets 100 updates after install? 17:58:34 lmacken - "we will always push more updates than people want, and we will always break things. how do we minimize this?" 17:59:53 stickster - how do we get people to test? 18:00:00 caillon - we don't have any 'thing' for them to test 18:00:47 no defined test starting point, no test cases, no incentive for them to test (or to create this content) 18:02:51 this isn't even clear for groups like releng or QA doing testing of critical path updates 18:03:53 also, for people contributing bugs in bugzilla, how do they test updates? packages from koji? 18:04:13 ... time is running out .. 18:04:22 will try and discuss more at the hackfests tomorrow 18:15:29 notting: #endmeeting plz 18:35:15 #endmeeting