Releases/Thunderbird 3.1b2/Post Mortem

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Post Mortem for the Thunderbird release of 3.1b2 (DialIn Info)

What went well

  • Shipped a good, solid release
  • Froze strings _and_ features before start of first RC (first time ever?)
  • Got most of the things we were targetting in

What could have gone better, and lessons learned

Leading up to the release

String Freeze

  • too many late strings
  • at least one localizability bug (migration asst images) not found/triaged until too late
  • Haven't had much push-back from localisers.
  • Not too many issues otherwise.
  • still had features landing late.
    • We had to land specific features due to the Major Update
    • Hopefully in future can land features when they are ready, and not necessarily at last minute (due to more agile/branch working).

Code Freeze

  • happened later than planned
  • too much code landed at the last possible minute
  • Could have slipped in an extra beta
    • Still feels like a lot of work for betas.
  • Can we restructure post 3.1?
    • Ship frequently with "milestones"
    • Can we automate QA etc, make it lower cost.

Release Notes

  • Need to pull out common variables to the top of the file.
  • Can we keep a rolling update of release notes?
    • Generally works well at the moment, may be something to consider later.

Build

  • Reasonable smooth
  • Signing went wrong for no real reason.
  • Main confusion was renaming from Lanikai -> Thunderbird
    • Update generation didn't like this

QA

  • Test coverage was 90% (about the same as in the past).
  • May want to improve migration & import litmus tests
  • How much bugzilla coverage did we get?

L10n

  • New dashboard may have caused some confusion.
    • 36 locales were green, only 33 included in the revision.
    • Simon was busy, so possibly didn't have time to chase up locales.

Anything else

Actions

Attendees

dmose, Standard8, andreas, gozer, wsmwk, bienvenu, bwinton, rebron