Release manager sync fails due to unclear handover date
In https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release/docs/-/blob/master/release_manager/index.md#guidelines-for-release-issue-assignment (through gitlab-org/release/docs!188 (merged)) we wrote that release managers for one release handle backports for previous releases to remove the need for handover and synchronisation between releases.
With gitlab-org/release-tools!928 (merged), we introduced a sync that adds active release managers from https://about.gitlab.com/community/release-managers/ to gitlab-org/release/managers
which allows us to have a single handle to mention the release managers responsible for the current release.
Between these two items, we need to define the exact handover date.
Bug description
Due to exact date check , scheduled pipeline will only check month and year and the release managers group would be updated only on the first of the month.
Even if the dates are correct, it would fail to update because this section will query the members of the group on the GitLab instance. Since the new active RM's and previous RM's differ, the check between release-managers group and config will fail with ZZZ is not an authorized release manager
which is confusing because the release managers candidates are also defined in a config file .
Proposed fix
- We agree that every 23rd of the month is when the transition between RM's occur. (Effectively, this will be done every 2 months because we do 2 month rotations) => This is completed with gitlab-org/release-tools!972 (merged)
- RM config is the source of truth for who can do RM tasks in general. This would mean that we no longer need to do a check between RM group and config file
- Delivery team group has access to conduct any necessary work in cases where RM's need help -> This is already the case.