I think the biggest confusion is that given the Google IO demo and the statements from Andy Rubin any people assumed that the donut release feature set had been fixed, and so the donut tree was working towards that feature set.
What's come to light is that the donut release feature set hasn't been fixed, and so donut is more a dev tree than an alpha, beta, or rc quality tree at the moment. The main reason the Google guys have got involved is some (very useful) expectation management. The more stories that circulate about multi-touch and other candidate features in donut the more likely consumers will hear them and expect those features, and when they don't arrive consumers will get disappointed. If Google PR had got onto people like engadget when they published this http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/27/android-2-0-donut-features-demoed-at-google-i-o/ nearly two months ago the donut == 2.0 mistake boulder wouldn't have got so much momentum. My suggestion for tackling it would be run the trees in a similar way to cupcake appeared in the open source tree; that is create an éclair tree when the éclair release feature set is fixed, and once the feature set is fixed the éclair tree only contains the work done in implementing it, that way éclair tree == éclair release (once its' done), the head of the tree can keep all the latest dev work in it, and the confusion is minimised. Al. -- * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Gibara Sent: 27 July 2009 08:26 To: [email protected] Subject: [android-discuss] Re: What is Donut? Sorry if this sounds a bit grumpy (I've been up since 3am) but: 1) How is this different from what one might sensibly expect as a developer? I appreciate that not everyone is, but... 2) Importantly, how is this different from the process that occurred with cupcake? Most people labouring under these confusions have probably already seen cupcake come and go and... 3) Why are the Google engineers who spend their valuable time explaining these things being harangued about this? Unfortunately I don't have any suggestions about how to tackle this wave of misinformation that threatens to sweep over every Android release, as it seems to be baked into the 'social web'. Tom. 2009/7/27 Al Sutton <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> I've been having some twitter exchanges with JBQ and reading around the various articles and I think I understand what donut is so I'm throwing it out to the list so we can clear anything up. There is not one Donut but two. (Mmmmm... Donuts) One is the codename for the next release (i.e. donut release), One is the branch in the git repo (i.e. donut tree). The feature set and version number for the donut release has not been fixed. The features in the donut tree and candidates for the donut release but are not guaranteed to be part of the donut release. As for a donut release version number, JBQ seems to think that "System V" is unlikely but anything is possible :). So; If you're using one of the donut sdks from the open source build you are using the donut tree and so it has candidate features, you are not using the donut release (because the shape and sprinkles for donut release have not been finalise), so some features may not make the cut. The other thing to remember is that OEMs and carriers get their hand in so even if a feature in donut tree does make it into donut release the OEM or carrier may remove it before consumers get a chance to take a bite. Does anyone think this isn't right? Al. P.S. As I understand things Romains' comment about "donut is not 2.0" should be read as "At the point in time when the comment was made donut tree does not contain just contain features for a donut release, and 2.0 has not been decided upon as the version number for the donut release. In the future the donut release may be given the 2.0 version number, but that has not been decided upon so *at this point in time* donut is not 2.0". -- * Written an Android App? - List it at http://andappstore.com/ * ====== Funky Android Limited is registered in England & Wales with the company number 6741909. The registered head office is Kemp House, 152-160 City Road, London, EC1V 2NX, UK. The views expressed in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Funky Android Limited, it's associates, or it's subsidiaries. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
