* code freeze lifts on Wed, May 25 after the Demo calls, at the start of Sprint 115.

* you don't need to create a branch or update your root pom to a newer parent pom (yay, less process!)

* build will run Thursday night and be copied to /staging/ on Friday morning EST.

* From Fri to Wed, you should *NOT* push anything into master branch; instead, see below for other work you can do to close out the sprint

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As Sprint 114 is done on Wed, May 25 (and we need something that's demoable that day!), it's time again to do a code freeze in master so that I can build the latest CI bits (Thurs), pull them tomorrow (Fri), turn that into something staged for QE to test (Mon), and then demo (Tues).

So, here's how that will work:

* we will not create branches
* we will just pull the latest bits from master -- whatever is committed as of 2pm PST / 5pm EST / 11pm CST is what will be built.
* we will use parent pom 4.4.0.Alpha1-SNAPSHOT - no Task JIRA needed to change this to Alpha2
* no root pom changes in each project are needed (we'll use 4.4.0.Alpha1-SNAPSHOT) - again, no Task JIRA needed
* features and plugins will still be called "Alpha1", not "Alpha2". This is simply to denote QUALITY, not to identify WHICH sprint/milestone.

This code freeze will continue until Wed, May 25 when this sprint (Sprint 114) ends & the next one (Sprint 115) starts.

If you have things you need to commit on Friday, here's how you can keep working without losing productivity:

* leave those commits in a PR or topic branch. Have a bunch of commits that depend on others? Create a "testing" branch and push everything there; then at the start of the next sprint, merge testing -> master.
* work on doc or N&N
* write a blog

* create a screencast / demo of your latest accomplishments!
* do some usability testing of your component or some other component
* use your tools! open some JIRAs if you find problems!
* JIRA cleanup/triage
* plan for the next sprint

Freaked out? Talk to Max or Alexey. They agree it's useful to do the above things at least ONCE every 3 weeks instead of at the end of the release. Welcome to Agile. :D

What's the process we'll use for this build? I will:

* build everything Thursday night,
* disable the jobs Friday morning,
* copy bits from /snapshots/ to /staging/AlphaX/,
* announce it to QE, &
* re-enable the jobs
* tag the projects using the SHAs used to produce the build

Note that the staging folder will be called Alpha2, as this is a "productization" step and is not dependent on parent pom or BUILD_ALIAS. I want to split the notion of "what the bits are called" from "what the release is called" since that's the direction Program Management is heading.

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Aside: I'm going rock climbing north of Montreal for the long weekend (Monday is a holiday here in Canada) so I'll be working late
tonight & offline by about 2pm tomorrow. Won't be online again until Tuesday morning. If anything goes seriously wrong, ping Mickael or Alexey. :D

Thanks for reading this far!

--
Nick Boldt :: JBoss by Red Hat
Productization Lead :: JBoss Tools & Dev Studio
http://nick.divbyzero.com