L10N New Software Deadline Proposal

L10N New Software Deadline Proposal

Current software translation activities are all scheduled within Alpha phase. Besides active development occurs after Alpha. This often leads string freeze breaks. The breaks informed to us are translated but have to rely on translator's great flexibility. For silent breaks, simply not translated as no one notice.

In order to coordinate translators resource more manageable, and to achieve higher localization percentage for Final Release (GA), G11N would like to move all software translation related events after Beta Freeze date. Please notice that this moves 'Software String Freeze' same date of Beta Freeze, thus allows the developers to change/add/remove strings freely to the last minute without soliciting to translation team.

The impact to other teams

• Devel – due to string freeze date change, no more rebuild translation in Alpha phase, but Launch phase.
• RelEng – no longer need to compose the image for l10n-qa, as Beta PA can be utilized instead.

Affected events

• Software String Freeze
• Software Translation
• Software L10N QA Test
• Software Translation Deadline
• Software Rebuild all translated packages by maintainers

Example with F23 Key Milestones

• date & event indicates existing events with dates to be moved
• date & event indicates proposed new dates
• date13 and date14 are the tasks for translators and to be modified under trans-task-schedule
• date15 is the task for developers and to be modified under devel-task-schedule
• There are some more tasks to be modified under trans-task, devel-task and rel-eng task accordingly (TBA in this page)

Date	Event	metrics
2015-05-26	Fedora 22 Release
2015-06-23	Change Checkpoint: Proposal submission deadline (System Wide Changes)
-----	Side Tag Builds Deadline
2015-06-16	Mass Rebuild
2015-07-14	Branch Fedora 23 from Rawhide (Rawhide becomes future F24)
2015-07-28	Alpha Freeze (*)
	Software String Freeze
	Change Checkpoint: Completion deadline (testable)
	Bodhi activation point
2015-08-11	Alpha Release
2015-08-25	Software Translation Deadline
2015-09-08	Beta Freeze (*)
	Software String Freeze
	Change Checkpoint: 100% Code Complete Deadline
2015-09-22	Beta Release
	Software L10N QA Preparation (5 days)	ends 2015-09-28
2015-09-29	Software L10N QA Test (5 days)	ends 2015-10-05
2015-10-06	Software Translation Deadline
2015-10-06	Software: Rebuild all translated packages (1week)	ends 2015-10-13
2015-10-08	Daily Review & Notification of Open Final Blocker Bugs	ends 2015-10-14
2015-10-13	Final Freeze (*)
2015-10-27	Fedora 23 Final Release

Amendment Suggestion

My only worry is G11N people need to keep tracking fixed packages gets necessary karma so that fixed package after Beta freeze will reach to Final release repository otherwise same fixed package will become zero day errata. e.g. I see we usually get 3 weeks period from Beta release to Final freeze. This proposal says l10n testing, translation deadline and package rebuilding should happen in 8 days from Beta release. But I also doubt here that there should be some difference for translation deadline and rebuild of packages. It may happen translation completed by deadline but maintainer is not available for a week and then when he builds new update its almost 2 weeks from Beta release. Then if this update will not get required karma, it will not reach to Final freeze repository and thus will become zero day errata update. So, even-if translators did their work but fixed package fails to be part of GA release, this proposal will not be having any benefit.

G11N Consensus

https://pagure.io/g11n/issue/2

We decided no-go with this proposal, instead l10n-qe and l10n team will gather string freeze breaks statistics via bugs filed also i18n team will develop automated scripts to detect any breaks when happen.