Deployments/Features Process/Mobile Notes

Mobile Dev/Deploy

• recently switched to dedicated deploy branch
  • called production
  • simultaneously
• deploy by recreating production branch of master
  • merge freeze 24hours-ish before deploy
  • deploy fixes without needing to mess with complicated merges/changes we don't want to deploy yet
• had problems when a new wmf branch was created, it grabed the mobile frontend from master, and it had problems with quality
• currently still need to spend some time testing during deployment
  • use test.wikipedia.org heavily
  • since they have the 2 hour window why not use it for testing
    • usual devs poke around basic functionality or stuff that has changed
    • michele has a test plans, which is run against 3 version
• normal unstable, beta, alpha
• dont' want to do mobile with core, because it has caused problems in the past
  • last major problem about a month ago
  • due to recent changes, the possibility of it needed any more is much less
• modeling after the separate branch?
  • depends on problems
  • what is the tech plan of the product managers
  • switching to dedicated production branch helped us
• sometimes they depend on core changes and thus, as a part of their deployment they have to deploy core changes as well, usually quite isolated
• I (Michelle) have a testing environment that I deploy merged code to so that the Designers and Product can see changes prior to the release it's http://staging.wmflabs.org/. This staging environment and test.m are only a piece of the puzzle because of caching which as you know adds a bit of a wrench in out deployments.

Chat with Maryana:

• two staging areas
  • alpha and beta mobile site
  • all three are different
• have to test each separately
• big challenge
  • what is a real bug but not just a product of test environment
  • eg test wiki
  • betalabs is still wonky
  • sometimes find out stuff a couple weeks later because of lack of intense testing on beta
• always the actual live production needs
• always begging to flush cache/sync stuff etc
• there is a more regular