[A4] release plan thoughts

[Leo Simons]

Hi all,

Getting our act together
========================
with that pmc vote process just about out of the way (thanks Leo!), infrastructure setup coming along nicely, would it be a good idea to set up a release plan for an across the board avalon release? Do people agree it is worth setting up some rigid structure to be able to get releases out? Are we ready for that?

I think we are :D

I started on a release plan, but I kinda found I don't know enough about some excalibur and cornerstone components in order to make any kind of sensible comment there. Is there someone who wants to take on the task of release manager, write up a release plan, schedule, etc? I will try and do it if needed but I feel there's better people for the job.

Things on our plate
===================
- Phoenix 4.1 (dependendent packages refactored recently, many features that didn't go into 4.0 now making it in IIUC)
- Fortress 1.0 (first release obviously)
- Framework 4.1.4 (javadoc changes, the wrapper classes, some additions to ConfigurationUtil, more tests I believe)
- Logkit 1.1.2 (logfactor 5 additions, other than that I dunno but I do know some features were added)

- Cornerstone (this badly needs a release I guess)
- Lots of excalibur packages (seperated out, bugfixed, new packages etc etc)

- AltRMI (I'm guessing it is just about ready for release? Is this baby so big we want to do it seperately?)
- Sevak (alpha release, at least? Paul?)
- Demo apps (should we just provide the .sars in the phoenix distribution or release these seperately?)

Ordered releases
================
Except for AltRMI perhaps (I believe it is really loosely coupled now?), I would think it makes sense that we do a coordinated release of all packages. Perhaps a good order would be:

- Logkit 1.1.2
- Framework 4.1.4
- all excalibur components used in phoenix (ie stuff like baxter)
- Phoenix 4.1
- all excalibur components used in fortress
- Fortress 1.0
- remaining excalibur components 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 releases
- cornerstone components

{- point releases for catching any serious bugs}

- avalon-apps/demo 1.0
- sevak 1.0

{- point releases for catching any serious bugs}

- altrmi 0.9

where after each component release, the other projects are updated, branched if neccessary (I think logkit and framework can do with tagging, phoenix is already properly branched), to be compatible with their dependencies. For example, we branch stuff like baxter into a stable branch which compiles against framework 4.1.4, and excalibur-logger into a stable branch which compiles against logkit 1.1.2, etc etc.

Status/Schedules
================
What's people's ideas on time schedules? IMO, logkit and framework are ready for release right now, someone just needs to do the work. I haven't done any phoenix testing on the refactoring changes Paul did, but I'm relatively sure it's pretty good to go as well. Paul?

Fortress itself is nearing the quality needed for a 1.0 release, but I don't know if that is true for all its dependencies. I'm a bit hung up on "remaining excalibur components 1.0, 1.1, 1.2 releases"...Steve, how confident are you wrt your product table accuracy? Can we base decisions of that? Also, how are things going with cornerstone refactoring? Have you got a time schedule for that in mind?

The demos have been in use for ages, and they are definately good for release. I dunno about sevak, but I have a hunch a release is desired by more than a few of our users. I've been writing some code on top of altrmi, and it feels really good; I haven't encountered a problem yet, but I also don't know the code so I can't say. In the altrmi case, I would like a release as a user :D

Let's do it!
============
Have we got the time, energy and spirit to stick our heads together and get some overdue products out? I think we do.

cheers!

- Leo



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