Viewer Integration and Release Processes
This page describes how Viewer development projects are organized, including the Mercurial (hg) repositories, builds, and the integration and release processes through which changes move to get from the developer (either inside or outside Linden Lab) to the Second Life Viewer.
There are three core hg repositories (each repository is in effect a branch; the processes described here do not rely on using the hg branching features within a repository):
- Development is the integration trunk
- Beta is used to test and stabilize releases and build beta releases
- Release is used to build official stable releases
all three of these repositories are used by both Linden Lab development teams and open source developers; they are accessible at hg.secondlife.com. Detailed descriptions of each, and the processes for moving changes between them, are below.
Repositories
Development
Location: http://hg.secondlife.com/viewer-development
- This is the conceptual ‘trunk’ from which all development, both inside and outside Linden Lab, should be derived.
It is built continuously, with the resulting viewers being publicly available from Downloading test builds and the Snowstorm Team page.
Any active viewer development, whether for feature development or bug fixes, pulls from (clones) this repository to a Project repository, and tracks all changes made in Development as work is done in that Project repository. Code is pulled back to this repository for integration: see Development Integration Criteria below.
Any build from this repository should be sufficient quality to be a candidate for the next Beta viewer release.
- Note: Developers should consider the viewer-development branch to be a "clean" trunk. It's not "pristine" -- we don't gate checkins through a QA process. But developers should be very confident before checking in to viewer-development, because other projects, both internal and external, are pulling from this repository on a daily basis. Those other developers rely on you to ensure that syncing up to viewer-development should not introduce problems. Developers must be willing to support their checkins.
Project
Location: determined by the development team, but somewhere at hg.secondlife.com or bitbucket.org is encouraged
Project repositories may be built as needed by the developers; viewers produced from Project repositories may be made available for public testing at times chosen by the development team.
Any development, whether a single engineer fixing a minor bug or a large team building a major feature, is done in a Project repository that pulls from Development. Large projects will likely have individual repositories pulling from and pushing to their team Project repository; how this is managed and tracks changes made to Development is under the control of the developer(s) on the project.
There may be any number of other repositories created by project teams or developers either inside or outside Linden Lab; these are Project repositories. The default channel identifier built from these repositories is "Second Life Developer". Projects that plan to make test viewers publicly available, which is encouraged, should change this to a project-specific value in those viewers.
Linden development teams releasing a Project Viewer should use the (internal) Project Viewer Release Checklist.
When development is complete and the Development Integration Criteria have been satisfied changes from a Project repository are moved back to the Development repository. See How To Submit A Viewer Change.
Beta and Release
To create the Beta and Release Viewers, the changes on the Development repository are moved through the Beta and Release repositories following the Beta and Release Process.
These are continuous processes - barring serious problems or extra time needed to test large or high risk changes, each week the current Beta version is promoted to Release and the current Development is moved to Beta to begin the next cycle. See the #Example Release Schedule below for the normal timing of these moves.
Location: http://hg.secondlife.com/viewer-beta
- The Integration and QA team tags Development and pulls from that tag into the Beta repository (since the Beta repository will contain only change sets that are already in Development, this pull does not require any merges).
- Final QA and stabilization are done using builds from the Beta repository; builds from this repository are released weekly on the “Second Life Beta Viewer” channel.
- Any bug fixes on this repository are immediately pulled to the Development repository by the Snowstorm Team.
Location: http://hg.secondlife.com/viewer-release
- When the Snowstorm Team decides that the Beta branch is ready for release (which we expect to be after 2-4 weeks of testing and stabilization), the Integration team pulls changes from Beta into the Release repository (this is the only path into the Release repository, so this does not require any merges), where it is tagged and built to produce the viewer released on the “Second Life Release” channel.
Development Integration Criteria
In order to be eligible to be pulled into the Development repository, the changes in a Project repository must satisfy all of the following criteria:
- Functionality must have been reviewed and accepted by the Product Owner
- Review is based on the requirements/user stories defined at the beginning of a sprint, and then at the end of a sprint during Acceptance Testing. For Linden development teams, these checks are the normal sprint reviews, not an additional step. For open source developers, the Snowstorm Team will coordinate these reviews with the appropriate Linden reviewers.
- Whenever possible, any substantial change in functionality or high risk change should have been released as a Project Viewer or otherwise made available for testing by residents on the main grid prior to integration.
- Design and code must have been reviewed by competent reviewers.
- In this context, “competent” means appropriate subject matter experts for the code that is modified. Linden development teams determine for themselves who the competent reviewers are; for open source contributions, the Snowstorm Team will determine the appropriate reviews. We have a public Code Review Tool for this purpose.
- If there are changes to code or protocols shared between the viewer and the simulator, those changes must include unit tests that at minimum validate that the behavior before and after the change is compatible. If that is not possible due to the nature of the change, then the change must include documentation on how the interfaces are changed, and the relevant simulator developers must review and approve them (for open source contributions, the Snowstorm Team will coordinate and facilitate these reviews).
- In this context, “competent” means appropriate subject matter experts for the code that is modified. Linden development teams determine for themselves who the competent reviewers are; for open source contributions, the Snowstorm Team will determine the appropriate reviews. We have a public Code Review Tool for this purpose.
- Any changes to strings in the user interface must have been reviewed by the documentation team.
- Any critical user interface changes must have been localized.
- Critical changes are ones that could lead to serious user errors if they were unable to read the strings. See the Viewer Localization instructions (internal) for specifics on how to get translations produced as a part of your development (open source contributors will do this through the Snowstorm Team).
- There must be a test plan
- The test plan must describe in detail how the modified behavior can be validated and tested. We provide a handy test plan template to help make this trouble free.
- The Project repository must have merged in the latest changes from Development.
- In this context, "latest" means certainly within a week, and better if it is within a couple of working days.
- The results must be validated by building viewers for all platforms and doing at least minimal viewer testing. Breaking the Development build is considered bad practice and may incur karmic debt.
- There must be Contribution Agreements on file from all contributors to the change if the Project repository contains changes made by non-Lindens.
When these criteria have been met, the development team may integrate into the Development repository; see How To Submit A Viewer Change.
If a checkin causes excessive instability or breaks customer experience in important ways, it may be reverted and the developer will have to fix the issues and re-integrate. We hope not to have to do this often, but we will make the reversion decision quickly, because reversion usually requires reverting all later checkins as well.
Beta and Release Process
The process by which the Development code is promoted to an official numbered Viewer release is:
- The Integration and QA team tags Development at the chosen changeset with a <version>-start tag, and increments the viewer version number on the viewer-development branch.
- The Release Manager
- Pulls from the <version>-start tag to the viewer-pre-beta repository and builds a Beta Candidate viewer from that branch.
- Creates a release document that includes test plan information and the list of all the changes included in the build (list of JIRAs, etc). Proper attention to detail during development should make this simple.
- Offer build to QA for testing and evaluation
- In QA, the integration test team:
- Executes the set of test plans for all of the changes included
- Performs a general smoke test on overall functionality
- Identifies overall quality and level of risk for release
- The Viewer Product Owner evaluates quality, risk and feature set and decides whether or not to release the build as Beta. Options are:
- Fail: this beta candidate is rejected and the process starts over at some different tag on Development (step 1).
- Fix First: specific bugs / issues are identified that must be fixed before ship. These bugs are fixed in the viewer-pre-beta repository.
- Fixes made to the viewer-pre-beta repository are immediately merged to Development by the Snowstorm Team.
- Ship: the Beta Candidate is ready as-is.
- Once a build is approved for ship, the Release team does its magic to get the build into the field as a Beta build on the “Second Life Beta Viewer” channel, adds the appropriate tag to record the changeset with the appropriate <version>-beta# tag, and pulls that tag to the viewer-beta repository.
- Once a Beta is in the field, we watch for new bugs, crash rate, performance, and other data. If the Beta needs further iteration, we might iterate multiple times on the Beta branch (return to step 4).
- The next week the Viewer Product Owner decides whether or not the Beta is of sufficient quality to ship as an official viewer; if so, the Release team:
- Tags the Beta branch
- Pulls from the tag on viewer-beta to viewer-pre-release
- Builds a Release Candidate from the viewer-pre-release repository.
- Releases on the “Second Life Viewer” channel, and pulls the corresponding sources to the viewer-release repository.
Example Release Calendar
The following illustrates how and on which days the various events described above occur as a change moves from Development to Release (all times are San Francisco local time). The contents of each release are shown as releases A, B, C, and D. For simplicity, any releases prior to A are not shown. In a complete calendar, all weeks would like like week 3 below.
| Week | Day | Viewer Repositories | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Development | Pre-Beta | Beta | Pre-Release | Release | ||
| 1 | Monday | 06:00 Version A Development → Beta Candidate | ||||
| Version B commits | Version A Beta Candidate Built | |||||
| Tuesday | Version A
|
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| Wednesday | ||||||
| Thursday | Promotion Meeting 12:00 | |||||
| Version A Beta Candidate → Beta | ||||||
| Friday
no changes |
Version A Beta Test | |||||
| Saturday
no changes |
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| Sunday
no changes |
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| 2 | Monday | 06:00 Version B Development → Beta Candidate | ||||
| Version C commits | Version B Beta Candidate Built | |||||
| Tuesday | Version B
|
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| Wednesday | ||||||
| Thursday | Promotion Meeting 12:00 | Version A Beta → Release Candidate | ||||
| Version B Beta Candidate → Beta | Version A Release Candidate Built | |||||
| Friday
no changes |
Version B Beta Test | |||||
| Version A Release Candidate QA | ||||||
| Saturday
no changes |
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| Sunday
no changes |
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| 3 | Monday | 06:00 Version C Development → Beta Candidate | ||||
| Version D commits | Version C Beta Candidate Built | |||||
| Tuesday | Version C
|
Version A Release Candidate → Release | ||||
| Wednesday | ||||||
| Thursday | Promotion Meeting 12:00 | Version B Beta → Release Candidate | ||||
| Version C Beta Candidate → Beta | Version B Release Candidate Built | |||||
| Friday
no changes |
Version C Beta Test | |||||
| Version B Release Candidate QA | ||||||
| Saturday
no changes |
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| Sunday
no changes |
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