Making D0 L3 Release Process More Efficient

 

December 5, 2000

 

David J. Ritchie

 

This is an early description of the project taken from a mail message sent to me.  This has not been reviewed by anyone but me so all errors and inaccuracies should be attributed to me and brought to my attention. 

 

Note that this has been evolving.  The later documents should be consulted for the current understanding.  There are elements within this document, however, which provide useful context.

 

David will start on this project January 2nd. He will coordinate the D0 work through Amber and report within ODS to Margaret and Ruth. He will work with Alan and Paul on the build scripts. It is not a goal to have new process in place before March 1.

 

The goal will be to make the D0 NT code building and release mechanism more robust and efficient for the Level 3 applications.

 

It is a goal to replace cygwin/srt scripts with use of the CTBUILD dependency and build text files such that the builds are done immediately in the Windows IDE environment. This should be done incrementally if possible without requiring major changes from the developers as the run approaches.

 

It is a goal to work with PAT to allow the D0 Level 3 NT code to move to the latest version of ZOOM, which requires the use of SiUnits.  This may require some time from Walter Brown. It is expected that this can be arranged with PAT.

 

It is an open question whether the work should be targeted for Windows 2000 only. We are interested in the strategy of the D0 L3 project on this issue.

Scenario’s for Need

 

Taking off from the above, I spoke with Alan and Paul and developed the following three release scenarios:

 

  1. Three  AM – Filter Change – Done by Shifter with Expert on Phone
    1. Needs to be minutes to no more than an hour
    2. Limited as to what one is allowed to change
  1. Development – Done by Release Manager
    1. Could take weeks
    2. Basically unlimited as to what one is allowed to change
  2. Bug Fixes – Few Package Change – Done by Level 3
    1. Should not take more than a day
    2. Focus is a few package changes and the incorporating officially what was done at 3 am

 

Other Items:

 

  1. Method of Test Release Command Line Mode versus IDE-based approach
  2. Issue of Web Page to Generate Releases via One Button

 

Notes as the result of the meeting:

 

  1. All of the above take off from the “Production” (P) releases as they are part of the Online.        
  2. Ruth will send around a description of the tasks.