This is a great summary of my understanding of what "milestone"
means, and I think is a reasonable definition of "release candidate".
I hope when we conclude this discussion we capture all of this
information on our website (especially the definitions), so it
doesn't repeat.
-dain
On Sep 20, 2005, at 9:46 AM, Alan D. Cabrera wrote:
It has been my experience that milestone releases were snapshots of
software that was in the alpha stage. The snapshots were taken at
meaningful times where the feature set was thought to be compelling
and self consistent for those who wanted to take an early peek. It
is important to stress that this was *alpha* software and not
feature complete. Milestone releases were not supported, i.e.
patches were *never* made. Milestone snapshots were made off the
trunk. Tags were made, but quickly removed after the next
milestone was hit, for the purposes of development in case of a
regression. A modicum of testing was done on the milestone to make
sure that it at least started.
Release candidates were snapshots of beta software. The trunk is
branched and the release candidates were snapshots of this branch.
These snapshots were thought to be feature complete but it was
understood that a certain amount of QA effort needed to be made to
ensure a certain amount of quality. During beta, all feature
additions were frozen. Release candidate themselves were not
supported. Tags were made, but quickly removed after the next
release candidate was released, for the purposes of development.
Once it was agreed that the last RC was of an acceptable quality,
it was made into the official release tag.
To recap, milestone and release candidates are both useful at
different times. Milestones are alpha snapshots and are not
supported. Release candidates are snapshots of beta software and
are not supported. The last release candidate that is officially
released is what is supported.
Regards,
Alan
