| [rt-pmc] Target Provisioning |
| Hi RT PMCs members, I think today is PMC Conf Call and I like to propose somthing that is maybe not very popular but I believe necessary. I raised my concern about the stability of the Target Provisioning when we where between M7 and RC1. Now we are a weeks later down the round (we call it RC3) and if I look at bugs like https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=277611 referenced bugs like https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=278818 or other still unresolved bugs like https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=278300 I am highly concerned about where we are. This is not intended as anything like whom to blame or "who has done it ?" but rather what can we do to warn users that the target provisioning is a very cool new feature (it really is) but it has (in my experience) not the quality that people experienced and will experience with the rest of Eclipse (including the SDK). And I know expectations are high. I talked to the RAP team and they are seriously thinking to not supplying RAP in the Galileo repository because they cannot get the proposed p2.inf hack to work that would disable the possibility to install RAP into the Eclipse SDK and certainly leave it (the SDK) unusable. I am concerned because people will file bugs like "Riena cannot be installed" rather than suspecting that the target provisioning system itself is still a little unstable. Look at the bugs above some where initially raised against Riena and we really have to thank Ekke for investing weeks and weeks testing the target provisioning story. I'd like to discuss that today. I am NOT proposing to pull it (that is impossible) but maybe mark it with a "beta" icon or by makig it crystal clear that we know it has bugs and we expect to find more bugs (more serious bugs) after GA. Prepare a wiki page to collect them. Help users to have a good experience and avoid pitfalls. And this is a thing that will hit Runtime projects the most because they are the one who uses target provisioning to setup their environment. The idea of the new target provisioning is really so great, people waited so long, expectations are high and there is only one chance to make a first impression. :-) cheers christian campo, riena project lead |