| [birt-dev] Eclipse BIRT PMC Meeting Minutes - Monday, July 16, 2007 |
Meeting
BIRT PMC, 10am Pacific, Monday, July 16, 2007
Attendees
Wenfeng Li - BIRT PMC Lead - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Paul Clenahan - BIRT PMC - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Scott Rosenbaum - BIRT PMC - Innovent Solutions (www.innoventsolutions.com)
Jason Weathersby - BIRT PMC - Actuate Corporation (www.actuate.com)
Mike Fox - BIRT PMC - IBM Corporation (www.ibm.com)
Larry Liang - BIRT PMC - InetSoft Technology Corporation (www.inetsoft.com)
Minutes
Meeting Logistics
There were no PMC meetings on July 2 and July 9 due to vacation schedules.
BIRT 2.1.3 Development
We are ready to release BIRT 2.1.3. A candidate build was made available last week and we will wait until this Friday, July 20th for any last minute feedback from the community.
General Information
BIRT 2.1.3 is the third maintenance release in the BIRT 2.1 release series and is intended to be narrow in scope since the development team is concentrating on BIRT 2.2. The 2.1.3 release is focused on addressing critical bugs identified by the community.
The Development Plan for BIRT 2.1.3 is available on the Eclipse BIRT pages (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/project_plan_R2_1_3.php).
For a list of bugs assigned to the release, refer to Bugzilla: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?classification=BIRT&target_milestone=2.1.3
BIRT 2.2 Development
BIRT 2.2 was released on June 29! Thanks go to the team on getting this release out as part of the Europa simultaneous release.
General Information
BIRT 2.2 is a major release and part of the Europa Simultaneous Release (http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Europa_Simultaneous_Release).
The Development Plan for BIRT 2.2 is available on the Eclipse BIRT pages (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/project_plan_R2_2_0.php). A number of BIRT Project Specifications (BPS) relating to BIRT 2.2 have been posted on the BIRT Wiki.
For a list of bugs assigned to the release, refer to Bugzilla: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?classification=BIRT&target_milestone=2.2.0
Compatibility and Testing
Mike asked some questions around expected compatibility of BIRT 2.2 with designs and applications created in earlier BIRT releases. In general, we strive for 100% upward compatibility, and we specifically test for this. See the development plan for additional information on our goals in this area.
However, it is not always possible to achieve 100% upward compatibility. For example, a bug fix may introduce compatibility problems where the report or application relied on the old (incorrect) behavior. In other cases, we may inadvertently create a compatibility problem that our tests do not catch.
We strongly encourage the community to test Milestone and/or Stable builds during the development cycle and log bugs for any compatibility issues they run into.
BIRT 2.2.1 Development
Development is underway on the first BIRT 2.2 maintenance release. This will be part of the coordinated Europa maintenance release and is targeted for the end of September 2007. The BIRT 2.2.1 development plan has already been posted and, as always, we are using Bugzilla to track all the projects that are part of the release.
The release is focused on addressing issues reported against BIRT 2.2, with the only other change being to add formal support for Windows Vista as a reference platform.
General Information
BIRT 2.2.1 is the first maintenance release in the BIRT 2.2 release series. This is part of the coordinate Europa maintenance release schedule and is focused on addressing critical bugs identified by the community.
The Development Plan for BIRT 2.1.3 is available on the Eclipse BIRT pages (http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/project/project_plan_R2_2_1.php).
For a list of bugs assigned to the release, refer to Bugzilla: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/buglist.cgi?classification=BIRT&target_milestone=2.2.1
Community Certified Platforms
We discussed the concept of being able to add additional "certified" (i.e. tested) platforms to the BIRT project, where the testing has been done by the community. This was a subject we discussed and deferred back in April (see https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=183645).
As a note, we are willing to look and try to address BIRT bugs reported for any platform -- although there is no guarantee that anything reported outside of the Reference Platform list can be fixed (since we may not be able to reproduce the issue).
On discussion, we have decided to add a concept of "Community Certified Platforms" to see if this might work. The idea would be that if someone in the community tested a particular platform then they could add it to the Community Certified Platforms List (a Wiki web page) so that others could tell if the platform had been tested, and to what degree.
We would encourage, but not mandate, that the testing should include:
Running the BIRT unit tests
Perform Basic UI testing for the BIRT Report Designer
Paul will coordinate getting the BIRT 2.2.1 Dev Plan updated to include this, as well as creating the initial Wiki page. Scott indicate that when this is done, he will try and recruit some testers.
BIRT Emitters
For the BIRT Excel, Word and PowerPoint emitters, we discussed that we should test these in a server-side "headless" environment. Larry will look into this.
BIRT Events
The following upcoming events will include talks on BIRT and/or Actuate sponsored BIRT booths:
Actuate International User Conference on August 13-15, 2007 -- Las Vegas, NV -- http://www.actuate.com/AIUC2007
BIRT Live! on August 15, 2007 -- Las Vegas, NV -- https://www1.event-projects.com/evo/AIUC2007/index.cfm?fuseaction=reg.BIRTLive
EclipseWorld on November 6-8, 2007 - Reston, VA - www.eclipseworld.net - Introduction to BIRT 2.2; BIRT 2.2 Integrating and Extending
BIRT Articles
The following articles have recently been published on BIRT:
Eclipse Developer's Journal – April 2007 - How to Develop an Application Using the Eclipse BIRT Design Engine API by Jason Weathersby; Tom Bondur; Jane Tatchell - http://eclipse.sys-con.com/read/367994.htm
Eclipse Magazine - April 2007 - ODA Extensions and BIRT - Part II by Scott Rosenbaum and Jason Weathersby - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
Eclipse Magazine - March 2007 - A Primer On ODA Extensions and BIRT by Scott Rosenbaum - http://www.eclipsemag.net/
Eclipse Developer's Journal - February 2007 - Developing an Application Using the Eclipse BIRT Report Engine API by Jason Weathersby; Tom Bondur; Jane Tatchell - http://eclipse.sys-con.com/read/336872.htm
Full list of articles can be found on the BIRT Project Wiki at http://wiki.eclipse.org/index.php/Articles(BIRT)