The objectives of the Alpha release are to:
In order to be released to the general public, the Alpha Candidate (RC) must meet all of the following criteria. This is intended to make the decision process as clear and straightforward as possible. Mostly met items are incomplete until they are met. Optional and nice to have items should not be included in this list.
There may be times where a requirement is unmet only in a particular configuration, such as with some keyboard layouts but not others, or if a particular character is used in a username, password or passphrase. In such cases, the release team should use their judgement and refer to precedent to determine whether or not the issue should be considered to block the release. They should consider the number of users likely to be affected by the issue, the severity of the case when the issue is encountered, and the ease or otherwise with which the issue can be avoided by both informed and uninformed users.
The term ‘release-blocking desktops’ should be understood to mean all the desktop environments in which bugs are currently considered capable of blocking a Fedora release. The current set of release-blocking desktops is GNOME and KDE. Note that bugs in desktops that are not part of this set which would infringe these criteria automatically qualify for nice-to-have status, according to the freeze exception bug process.
All bugs blocking the Alpha tracker must be CLOSED.
A correct checksum must be published for each official release image.
There must be no errors in any package on the supported images which cause the package to fail to install.
What errors?
Critical errors include, but are not limited to, undeclared conflicts (explicit Conflicts: tags are acceptable) and unresolved dependencies.
All supported images must boot in their supported configurations.
Supported architectures
Supported architectures are the Fedora primary architectures.
Supported firmware types
Supported images must boot from all system firmware types that are commonly found on the primary architectures.
Supported media types
Supported live and dedicated installer images must boot when written to optical media of an appropriate size (if applicable) and when written to a USB stick with *at least one* of the officially supported methods.
System-specific bugs
System-specific bugs don’t necessarily constitute an infringement of this criterion - for instance, if the image fails to boot because of a bug in some specific system’s firmware, that is unlikely to constitute a violation unless the system is an extremely popular one. See the Blocker Bug FAQ for more discussion of this.
Boot menu contents
The boot menu for all supported installer and live images should include an entry which causes both installation and the installed system to use a generic, highly compatible video driver (such as ‘vesa’). This mechanism should work correctly, launching the installer or desktop and attempting to use the generic driver.
System-specific bugs
System-specific bugs don’t necessarily constitute an infringement of this criterion - for instance, if the installer or desktop fails to start because of a bug in support for some specific graphics card, that is unlikely to constitute a violation. See the Blocker Bug FAQ for more discussion of this.
Except where otherwise specified, each of these requirements applies to all supported configurations described above.
The installer must run when launched normally from the supported images.
Launched normally?
‘Launched normally’ means from the boot menu on a dedicated installer image, and from the desktop on a live image.
When using the dedicated installer images, the installer must be able to use either HTTP or FTP repositories (or both) as package sources. The network install image must default to a valid publicly-accessible package source.
When using the DVD image, the installer must be able to use the DVD as a package source.
When using the dedicated installer images, the installer must be able to complete an installation using the text, graphical and VNC installation interfaces.
Showstoppers
This criterion can be used to cover showstopper bugs in the installer for which there isn’t a specific criterion: obviously, it can’t ‘complete an installation’ if there’s a showstopper.
When doing a graphical install using the dedicated installer images, the installer must be able to install each of the release blocking desktops, as well as the minimal package set.
Not all at once!
This means you must be able to do a GNOME install, then start over and do a KDE install, then start over and do a minimal install. Not necessarily that you should be able to do any combination of them all at once.
The user must be able to select which of the disks connected to the system will be affected by the installation process.
Other disks not touched
Disks not selected as installation targets must not be affected by the installation process in any way.
The installer must be able to complete an installation using any supported locally connected storage interface.
What are they?
‘Locally connected storage interfaces’ include PATA, SATA and SCSI.
The installer must be able to complete an installation to a single disk using automatic partitioning.
Details!
...well, so long as the disk is big enough, of course. It must work whether the disk is formatted or not and whether or not it contains any existing data - but since this is an Alpha, it’s OK if it can only install to a disk with existing data by overwriting it.
The rescue mode of the installer must start successfully and be able to detect and mount an existing default installation.
Start successfully?
‘Start successfully’ means it should be able to get you to a console that can interact with the mounted installation.
The installer must be able to download and use an installer update image from an HTTP server.
The installer must be able to report failures to Bugzilla, with appropriate information included.
You mean, ANY failures?
No, silly - we mean crashes, really. This is about the crash reporting capabilities: when the installer crashes, it should pop up some dialogs that let you send a report containing data on the crash.
Except where otherwise specified, each of these requirements applies to all supported configurations described above.
Encrypted partitions
In all of the above cases, if any system partitions were encrypted as part of the installation, the boot process must prompt for the passphrase(s) and correctly unlock the partition(s) when provided with the correct passphrase(s).
User intervention
In all of the above cases, the boot should proceed without any unexpected user intervention being required. On a graphical install, if the user explicitly intervenes to prevent graphical boot by passing a bootloader parameter, the non-graphical requirement comes into effect.
It must be possible to run the default web browser and a terminal application from all release-blocking desktop environments.
Web browser requirements
The web browser must be able to download files, load extensions (if applicable), and log into FAS.
The installed system must be able to download and install updates with yum and with the default graphical package manager in all release-blocking desktops.
Bugs in particular updates
A bug in some particular update package will not usually constitute a violation of this criterion. It’s really about the update mechanisms functioning correctly. So if yum is working fine, but the update transaction fails because there happen to be two conflicting packages in the repositories, that’s not a release blocking problem.
The default desktop background must be different from that of the two previous stable releases.
Any component which prominently identifies a Fedora release version number, code name or milestone (Alpha, Beta, Final) must do so correctly.
A system logging infrastructure must be available, enabled by default, and working.
What do you mean, ‘working’?
Well, it must provide at least basic local file-based logging of kernel messages, and allow other components to write log messages. This must be done in accordance with relevant standards accepted by the Fedora Project.
It must be possible to trigger a clean system shutdown using standard console commands.
What do you mean, ‘clean’?
The system must shut down in such a way that storage volumes (e.g. simple partitions, LVs and PVs, RAID arrays) are taken offline safely and the system’s BIOS or EFI is correctly requested to power down the system.
A bug is considered a Alpha blocker bug if any of the following criteria are met:
A bug in a Critical Path package that:
- Cannot be fixed with a future stable update
- Has a severity rating of high or greater and no reasonable workaround (see definition of severity and priority)
Bug hinders execution of required Alpha test plans or dramatically reduces test coverage
Bug relates to an unmet Alpha Release Requirement
A Fedora feature being incomplete, in and of itself, does not constitute a blocker bug. The feature process is separate from this process. Features are required to meet certain standards at certain points of the release cycle, but this is part of the feature process and managed, tracked and enforced separately from this process. However, if a proposed feature being incomplete causes any of the above criteria to be met, then the bug is a release blocker.
QA has the responsibility of determining whether the criteria for the release has been met (as outlined above) through discussion with Development and Release Engineering. QA’s findings will be reviewed and discussed at the Go/No-Go Meeting.