Sounds good, I'll see if I can lend a hand in writing patches to close some tickets.
On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 10:14 PM, Erik Uzureau <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dear dev, > > Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but > things in Boston have been hot and I haven't had a spare minute for > OpenLayers for months. > > With the FOSS4G 2008 Conference coming up, some of us have been > looking at the 2.7 release page[1] and brainstorming as to whether or > not we might have something new to show in Cape Town. > > A quick glance at the list shows that we've already closed about 40 > tickets from the 2.7 milestone... certainly doesn't hold a candle to > the nearly 300 closed tickets from 2.6, but then again since when have > we been in the candle business? > > In the wake of 2.6 and generally over the last few months, there has > been a lot of talk of doing more regular, smaller releases. What if we > give it a try? Put our elbow grease where our mouth is, if you will. > The rally cry, then, is... > > > Let's show the world OpenLayers can do a Full Release in 2.5 Months! > > > Back when I used to work in the software industry, we used to say, > "Time, Resources, and Work... you can only fix two of them." Now that > may sound goofy, but I think it's a reasonable game plan. The > resources we have (people hours) are pretty much fixed by themselves, > so if we're fixing the time, then that leaves us with Work as the > floating operator in the equation. > > What this means, quite simply, is that instead of our usual hanging > around and waiting for all the appropriate tickets to be closed before > making a release (bending time for work), this time around we are > going to have to take the not-quite-fixed bugs and the > still-debating-it features and simply push them off into the 2.8 > release. > > It is, to be sure, a distinctly different approach from releases past. > But OpenLayers is still a relatively young project, and the people > that build it are some of the smartest and most agile developers out > there... so if ever there has been a time to experiment with something > new, that time is now. > > History says we generally take 2-3 weeks to go from rc1 to a final > release, so I figure if we set the target date of September 1 for 2.7 > rc1, then we can safely predict a final release of 2.7 to show at the > conference at the end of September. > > What do you think? > > I've talked this over with both Tim Schaub and Chris Schmidt and they > both seem to be in favor of giving it a shot. I think it would be good > for us to hear what other people think of this idea so please voice > your support or concern here to the dev list. > > > I'm going to start today by doing a pass through the tickets and > sifting out those which I don't think will get done in time for the > September 1 RC, so that we have a clearer picture of what is possible. > Given the time frame and the number of open tickets, the majority of > what will end up in 2.7 will be bug fixes, rather than features, and I > think we should all be comfortable with that. > > Now It goes without saying that if I move a ticket that you think is > really important, you should feel free to move it back (but please > include a clear comment as to both "why" you think it should be in 2.7 > and "how" -- ie who is going to do the work). Overall I think we will > see a lot more ticket movement in general, since we will be keeping to > a hard deadline. > > I will be out of the office and off the internet for the next three > weeks on holiday (por fin!). On return, I will be heading out to > Boston, where some of the TOPP developers will be getting together > with the OL team at MetaCarta for a week of concentrated work on > OpenLayers. Hopefully after that week we will have a much clearer > picture of where we are in terms of what can be squeezed into the 2.7 > release, so that we can spend the month of August developing like mad > and tying up loose ends. > > > In closing, I ask once again that you voice your opinion on what I've > proposed in this email. It goes without saying that we need the > support of the whole community to pull this off, so it will help all > of us to hear what you have to say. Furthermore, if you have time over > the next few weeks, take a look over the tickets that you are > interested/involved in and try to think seriously about whether or not > you can help them to get done and into trunk by September 1. > > > Thanks in advance for your comments and participation! > Erik > > [1] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.7 > _______________________________________________ > Dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev > -- Regards, Thomas Wood (Edgemaster) _______________________________________________ Dev mailing list [email protected] http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
