[Chandler-dev] alpha3/alpha4 and priorities

[Katie Capps Parlante]

Ok, so I should have sent this out earlier, but a few words about 
priorities as we transition from alpha3 to alpha4...

+ A "dogfoodable" alpha3 with background sync is the highest priority.

This means that fixing background sync bugs and fixing regressions are 
the most important tasks. If you have these bugs, or can help someone 
who does, that is a good way to spend your time. :) Friday's IRC testing 
session is important to shake out more background sync/merging bugs.

+ Shoring up functional and unit tests is a high priority. Fixing test 
failures is always a high priority.

A healthy testing framework and comprehensive suite of tests (unit 
tests, functional tests, etc.) is important to us working efficiently as 
a team. It allows us to to make significant improvements and changes to 
the code base (like the wx tarball or the background sync feature) 
without disrupting everyone on the team. It prevents introducing 
regressions as we add new features. If you don't have alpha3 bugs, 
spending a few cycles enabling functional tests that aren't working is a 
good idea. Adding new tests to go along with the new features is also 
important.

+ A first pass at "experimentally usable" dashboard and scheduling is 
high priority in alpha4 (including all of the work that supports this, 
like domain model, stamping, search, a bit of email, etc.)
+ Continuing to improve "dogfoodability" is high priority in alpha4 
(including data migration, sharing improvements, etc.)
+ Improving performance is high priority in alpha4

We'll likely branch soon (today? Heikki will give the go ahead). If you 
don't have alpha3 bugs or tests to write, getting started on alpha4 work 
is a good idea. This includes performance work if you have bugs/tasks to 
chase down slow use cases or write performance tests. Spending a bit of 
time on list discussions to unblock someone else's work on alpha4 is 
also appreciated.

Sheila's Alpha4 plan of record:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/DetailedAlpha4Plan

Cheers,
Katie