[j-nsp] JUNOS major releases - differences between revisions

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Sat, 21 May 2011 14:21:34 -0700
> From: Darren Bolding <darren at bolding.org>
> Sender: juniper-nsp-bounces at puck.nether.net
> 
> Allow me to reiterate the significant impact
> internal/confidential/restricted PR's have on the utility of Junipers public
> facing PR lists.
> 
> To wit- the private PR's make the public lists essentially useless, and
> researching them a waste of valuable time.
> 
> I've had various Juniper folks tell me that the policy is that if the PR
> affects only one customer, it is kept private.  We have run into unexpected
> impacts that were already private PR's on every single release of code, on
> every single Juniper platform we have used to date.  We always ask that the
> private PR be made public since it now clearly is impacting multiple
> customers.  I've checked a couple of times and the rate that they have been
> made public is less than 100%.
> 
> We've been told this would be fixed a number of times.  I haven't seen
> progress.
> 
> So, for now, the best practice seems to be to watch forums, ask questions,
> and slowly roll out new releases through your environment.  After all, we
> all have budget, technology and resources to reasonably simulate real-world
> traffic on a full-scale testing clone of production environments, don't we?
> 
> --D
> 
> 
> On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 11:22 AM, Jim Boyle <jboyle at juniper.net> wrote:
> 
> > Richard - you are right about the scope here, but we are working towards
> > progress in this area.  It's not easy! Hopefully you'll start to see
> > progress over the next few months in terms of content visibility and
> > usefulness.  And beyond that we have other efforts underway for further
> > improvements.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Jim
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Richard A Steenbergen [mailto:ras at e-gerbil.net]
> > Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 2:10 PM
> > To: Jim Boyle
> > Cc: Alex; Dale Shaw; juniper-nsp
> > Subject: Re: [j-nsp] JUNOS major releases - differences between revisions
> >
> > On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 10:38:22AM -0700, Jim Boyle wrote:
> > > You can also take a look at the results from our online PRSearch
> > application.
> > >
> > > http://www.juniper.net/prsearch/
> > >
> > > Select 10.4R3, or 10.4R4 and show the results "Closed" in that
> > > release.  That will show available PRs with commits/resolution in that
> > > release ("Closed" isn't quite accurate here as the PR may be open for
> > > other releases or follow-on actions)
> > >
> > > Thanks to Alex for the pointers on the release notes.  In general, the
> > > release notes show what is fixed in that release (under Resolved
> > > Issues for each section).  So if you check the PRs in the 10.4R4 ones,
> > > and cross check them on the web, you should find they are resolved in
> > > 10.4R4.
> > >
> > > I'll admit that finding the this information isn't as easy as it
> > > should be.  Juniper certainly has room for improvement here for
> > > usability as well as consistency of information.  We are working
> > > towards improvements in this area.
> >
> > Alas we find that something like 75% of our PRs end up being marked
> > confidential until we ask for them to be changed (sometimes multiple
> > times :P), even when there is no reason for them to be, which tends to
> > make the PR search all but useless for any real work. And I won't even
> > start complaining about the accuracy of the PR public facing
> > descriptions, that would be a whole 'nother thread. :) Sorry but the
> > only way to get any real work done is to have an RE or SE be your bitch
> > and look up the PRs to tell you what they're REALLY about, hoping for
> > anything else is a complete fantasy.
> >
> > --
> > Richard A Steenbergen <ras at e-gerbil.net>       http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras
> > GPG Key ID: 0xF8B12CBC (7535 7F59 8204 ED1F CC1C 53AF 4C41 5ECA F8B1 2CBC)
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > juniper-nsp mailing list juniper-nsp at puck.nether.net
> > https://puck.nether.net/mailman/listinfo/juniper-nsp
> >

This is one of Juniper's more bone-headed policies.

I can't count the number of bug reports we have submitted to JTAC that
were existing PRs, but "confidential". Worse, on several occasions the
initial report showed "no matches in the PR database" and it was only
after a new PR was opened and the problem escalated that a matching PR
was found.

I wonder if several PRs that are confidential (because only one customer
has seen them) were really seen by others, but no PR match ever occurred.

In any case, I quit searching the PR database at Juniper long ago. I
suspect it is enough of a mess that, even if the PRs were not mostly
confidential, we would be unable to find matches.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751