On 6/11/06, Alan D. Cabrera <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
X.Y.z: patch release - bug fixes X.y: minor release - bug fixes and compatible enhancements x: major release - major enhancements, and incompatible changes I am very much against placing anything but patches in the .z releases. Let me explain why. When we make a minor release we basically branch the X.y release for the purposes of releasing patches. Any changes to this branch, e.g. patches, must also be immediately applied to the trunk. If we make any enhancements to this branch, we must also immediately apply the same enhancement to that branch. This adds significant more risk that bug patching but more importantly when we fall into the trap of putting minor enhancements into a patch release, we remove the most serious impetus to getting the minor release done and out the door.
+1. This allows us to time box the bug fix releases. If we can get into the groove of doing regular x.y.z releases (at like 1 a month intervals), then I think that also reduces the pressure on needing to make the x.y releases perfect. I think we sometimes delay our x.y releases because we are aiming for perfection. The only problem with the above is that it does not solve the problem of being able to time box the x.y release. The since dev branch of the x.y release could have multiple new features at different levels of completion it's hard to stabilize at any given time. Do you guys consider this a problem? I like Dain's suggestion of splitting up the modules. In theory in progress work being done separately versioned project should not hold up the time boxed release of a Geronimo x.y. Geronimo would just release with the previous stable version. In practice, even for independently versioned projects like ActiveMQ, Geronimo will hold up it's releases to get new releases from ActiveMQ. This is bad if you want to time box a release. Another thought that might help Geronimo be able to stay on a time box release cycle is making more use of 'development' branches. We could encourage develops to work on new features in development branches that get merged in once the feature is fully working. The down side to this is that it may not be obvious to other developers what work is going on where. Or perhaps we need to do a a combination of independent versioned modules where most of the work happens, and then having small development branches of the main Geronimo module that holds the integration code that enables the new features. So then then development branches are used to do integration testing with in progress features and they are merged in to trunk once the feature is done and all integration testing is completed. -- Regards, Hiram
