Hello Planning Council, Below is a draft of what I want to send to the IDE WG Steering Committee. Please respond with a +1 if you believe this accurately captures our discussion, or let me know if you think I have missed something important. I want to get these off to the Steering Committee as soon as possible so the Steering Committee can discuss at an upcoming meeting.
Thanks,
Jonah
Hello IDE WG Steering Committee,
The Planning Council has, as requested, put together the list of priorities for SimRel[1]. The full details, including vote totals/etc are in the spreadsheet, but this email aims to highlight the top three items. I have focused on the problem definition rather than proposed solutions at this time. The planning council can expand on them as needed and look forward to working with the steering committee and community towards solving these issues.
Bus Factor
Too many of our releng processes have a low bus factor[2]. There are 4 main releng roles to produce the IDE, in addition to the individual projects releng roles:
- Platform
- SimRel
- EPP
- Oomph (aka Installer)
We have not measured the actual bus factor for these roles, but probably (apart from Platform) the number is 1.
Identify Project Risks
Projects will come and go and we need to be prepared for projects to leave or not be maintained anymore. There is a large overlap here with discussions that have already started in the steering committee and captured in the Project Plan and tracked in the Epics[3]. To expand on the project risks we need to produce a list of projects involved and an evaluation of their importance and criticality to the overall mission.
Graphical layer lacking behind operating system changes
Graphical layer lacks behind operating systems and exposes multiple issues which render a lot of other work invisible for users e.g.:
- No reliable Edge integration on Windows and IE being actively replaced by MS and practically useless
- Dark themes on most OS are inconsistent despite huge user interest in them
- System integration (desktop launcher and etc.) lacking on Linux.
This is just the tip of the iceberg but these things make a lot of features and plugins look unprofessional and/or unfinished due to such issues ruining the overall pleasant experience.
Conclusion
I look forward to discussing these items at the Steering Committee and making some tangible progress on resolving them.
Thank you,
Jonah
