Technical Team/Spec Release Process

SPECIFICATION RELEASE PROCESS AND CHECKLISTS

Status: DRAFT (not reviewed yet)

Introduction

The overall process for releasing a version of the specification can involve many people from different teams within the SPDX workgroups.This document and the accompanying checklists are meant to explain how a change to the specification is drafted, released and the steps and collateral that need to be updated along the way. This should serve to not only clarify the process for the SPDX Community but to also avoid any bumps in the road along the way.

The Process

Updates to the specification are normally planned and appear on the SPDX Roadmap. From time to time and as circumstances dictate, smaller point revisions to the specification (i.e. a dot version) will be announced. In general, we tend to release versions of the specification around the Linux Collaboration Summit and LinuxCon North America Conferences.

Sources for changes to the specification normally come from bug reports in the bugzilla system maintained by the Linux Foundation for SPDX. Items being incorporated into the specification will have their target release set to the version of the SPDX specification being drafted (i.e. 1.2, 1.3, 2.0, etc). Other possible sources for incorporation can come from planned tooling plugfests, feedback from users and so forth. In general, these will be documented as bugs before inclusion.

When work is planned on a new version, the Technical team lead will announce the version on the general mailing list along with a short summary of what changes are going to be addressed (we may not yet know "how" they will be fixed). The Business team will then update the Roadmap (if necessary) along with the predicted release date. Anyone wishing to participate in the drafting/review of the specification should be on the Tech team mailing list and if possible attend the tech team calls.

Work on the specification will done using Google Docs. Non editors for the release can review and comment there. Editors will have access to make changes. Editors get edit privilege from the Tech team lead. You are strongly encouraged to be part of the process, commenting along the way. Nothing is worse then getting to the end and then realizing one or more individuals have issues with something. Note: Google docs offers some advantages over using the wiki for editing like this. In the future we may use something else.

As work progresses on the draft, periodic review versions will be announced by the Tech Team lead on the SPDX mailing lists. Therefore if you are a casual reviewer you can use these triggers to review the new changes without having to keep your finger on the specific pulse of things.

When all changes have been made to the specification and the tech team /editors are in agreement that this is ready to go, a Best and Final approval notice will be sent to the General List. Note that we generally use Lazy Consensus as defined in our Governance document when approving something.

In parallel to the document updates, the RDF terms pages will be updated. Bugzilla is used to coordinate changes between the spec and the RDF terms. Once the spec has been updated for a particular bug, the bug is reassigned to the individual maintaining the RDF terms. The RDF terms maintainer will update the RDF terms and post intermediate changes to [TBD]. Prior to release, the RDF terms will be reviewed by members of the technical workgroup. Once the RDF terms have been updated for a particular bug, it will be reassigned to the individual maintaining the tools to track changes required in the SPDX tools.

Tools

The SPDX workgroup tools will be updated and released as part of the specification.

Once the SPDX RDF terms and the SPDX documents have been updated and reviewed, the tools will be updated to support the specification.

An early version of the tools will be made available to the SPDX tech workgroup for testing prior to release.

The updated tools will be uploaded to the SPDX tools web pages found at http://spdx.org/spdx-tools/tools-from-the-spdx-workgroup.

SPDX workgroup tools are designed to be backwards compatible supporting previous versions of the specification.

The file "changelog" in the root source directory for the tools provide information on which SPDX document versions are supported by the tools version.

For comment:

• Do we tie versions of the tools to the spec version? [Gary] - Right now this is just in the source file. We probably should produce a mapping of the tools version to SPDX version on the web page itself.
• The tools need testing prior to release. I suggest at least three independent people must test before release (not including the people who worked on the tool). [Gary] - Agree - updated
• is there a lag to the tool release? [Gary] - Would like to have the tools available at the same time as the release.

License List Incorporation

Every release of the specification includes the latest published version of the License List. In general, if you look at the roadmap the SPDX Group will do an update of the License List before a planned specification is released (assuming there are updates to the list).

Specification Review Checklist

Specification Review Checklist

Item	Who is Responsible	Status
Notification of start of work on a new version to the General List (with summary)	Tech team lead
Web site updated with page to hold new spec version (points to google doc repro)	Web Admin
Web site news announcement (in banner area) that draft is under way	Web Admin

SPDX Specification / Document Collateral Release Checklist

Specification Release Checklist

Item	Who is Responsible	Status
Notification on general list that the specification is approved	Tech team lead
Web site updated with page to hold new spec version	Web Admin
RDF terms page updated	Web Admin
Web site news announcement (in banner area) that there is a new version	Web Admin
Press release (via Linux Foundation) for the new version	Business Team
Roadmap updated to show specification release	Business Team

SPDX Tools Release Checklist

Tool Release Checklist

Tool	Who is Responsible	Status
Spreadsheet Template and Examples updated	Tech team tools group
RDF to Tag and Tag to RDF Translators updated	Tech team tools group
RDF to HTML Pretty Printer updated	Tech team tools group
Spreadsheet to RDF and RDF to spreadsheet updated	Tech team tools group
SPDX Compare updated	Tech team tools group
SPDX Viewer updated	Tech team tools group
Spreadsheet Template and Examples posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin
RDF to Tag and Tag to RDF Translators posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin
RDF to HTML Pretty Printer posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin
Spreadsheet to RDF and RDF to spreadsheet posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin
SPDX Compare posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin
SPDX Viewer posted to web site	SPDX Web Admin

Review Comments

Place review comments here. They will be reviewed when its ready to go.

We should add the RDF terms updates to the process. I have some of the information, but not enough detail to post - Gary