Here is my proposal for the Release Plan. After a discussion period, we will vote on this Release Plan.
Aiming for a release date of 17 January 2011 [4]. Please check with your time schedules and comment. We want to have as many people available as possible to test the release candidate. So we can adjust the time schedule a bit to suit. For background info on this step and on the release process in general, see http://forrest.apache.org/procedures/release/How_to_release.html#PrepRelPlan ------------------------ The minimum Java version for this release is Java 1.5 ------------------------ I will be the Release Manager. People can help with various aspects of the release process. See [9]. People can also help between now and then to prepare the codebase. ------------------------ For Plugins, see the proposal below. ------------------------ The phases are: Voting to accept the Release Plan ends on: Monday 2010-12-20 at 22:00 UTC [1]. The first release candidate and start of testing: Monday 2011-01-10 at 22:00 UTC [2]. We create the release candidate on this day and start the testing. One week is available for this phase. Don't bother voting until towards the end of the week, because we might need a new release candidate. The vote needs to happen against the actual final packages. During "code freeze" we do not add any new functionality or non-essential work, just bug fixes and documentation tweaks [5]. If necessary then we create another release candidate on Saturday 2011-01-15 at 22:00 UTC [3] to give people time to verify the signatures and checksums and to do final tests. Between this date and the release date there must no changes to SVN. If any are absolutely necessary, then we delay the release date and do another release candidate. End of voting period: Monday 2011-01-17 at 22:00 UTC [4] This is the scheduled release date, then wait for the mirrors to receive it before sending the announcements. ------------------------ Plugins release plan: In the past we have never done a proper "release" for any of the plugins. We have just done a "deploy" for some of them, which packages a plugin and copies it to our website to make it available to people who use a Forrest release. That is not suitable. See [7]: "Releases are, by definition, anything that is published beyond the group that owns it." i.e. beyond our "dev" list. To rectify that, i propose that we follow up after the core 0.9 release to actually vote and release each plugin that is suitable to be made widely available. Please see the list showing the state of each Plugin [8]. Between now and mid-January, please work on your favourite plugin to get it ready, send patches etc. Deploy any that need to be either updated or made available. After the 0.9 release is done, we will follow up to either "release" each one or to retract it. Any that are suitable to be released would also be moved out of the "whiteboard/plugins". If this general Plugin release plan is okay, then we can devise a more detailed procedure. After this batch of plugin releases, they can each be independently released as new plugin versions are needed. ------------------------ The proposed milestones are: [1] end of vote on Release Plan Monday 2010-12-20 at 22:00 UTC http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=20&month=12&year=2010&hour=22&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 [2] create initial release candidate, start testing Monday 2011-01-10 at 22:00 UTC http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=10&month=1&year=2011&hour=22&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 [3] create final release candidate if necessary Saturday 2011-01-15 at 22:00 UTC http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=15&month=1&year=2011&hour=22&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 [4] end of vote on final release candidate and commence the upload phase Monday 2011-01-17 at 22:00 UTC (i.e. planned release date) http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=17&month=1&year=2011&hour=22&min=0&sec=0&p1=0 [5] Code freeze is defined here http://forrest.apache.org/procedures/release/announce_code_freeze.txt [6] Guidelines for Voting http://forrest.apache.org/guidelines.html#voting http://forrest.apache.org/guidelines.html#actions [7] What is a Release? http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#what [8] State of Plugin deployment http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/forrest/trunk/etc/review-plugin-deployment.txt [9] How to release Forrest http://forrest.apache.org/procedures/release/How_to_release.html ------------------------
