On Feb 21, 2006, at 10:00 AM, Sheila Mooney wrote:
Katie sent out an email about the proposed 0.7 milestones about a
week ago.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/dev/2006-February/005137.html
If we are setting the bar a bit higher and considering these "mini-
releases" as something our users can download and play with, it
brings to mind some questions around what non-code deliverables
would be appropriate to support these "mini-releases". Based on
some earlier brainstorming, I have put together a proposal to put
out on the list for further discussion.
Some high level thoughts and assumptions....
+ We need something light-weight. A full non-code release process
with landing page design and documentation is not practical for
these 2 month milestones.
We have a non-code release process which was aimed at the end of
"real" releases. For 0.6, the process took almost 3 weeks, so
clearly, we cannot apply the same process. I think that we should
look at the checklist for a "real" release and pick whatever elements
are relevant to a particular alpha.
+ We should leverage the current Chandler landing page we have now.
+ We likely would like to publicize these partial releases a bit
more than past milestones so our current calendar users can have
access to new features.
Straw-person proposal....
+ We would NOT create a new landing page for each milestone, we
would use the existing 0.6 landing page.
I am now rueing the use of the term landing page. The pages at
<project>.osafoundation.org ought to be the primary pages for those
projects. I don't think that we need to do a top to bottom rework
of these pages for every release. At some point we will do a
branding exercise for OSAF, and when we finish, we will do a top to
bottom rework on these pages.
+ We would not update the release number or download link on the
existing 0.6 landing page. It's still possible we will have further
patches to 0.6 and this would just get confusing.
+ The existing readme for 0.6 would NOT be replaced or modified.
Instead we would have a new simple html page listing the new
features and known critical bugs, very similar to the milestone
report cards used in 0.6.
+ The feature list would be brief and not detailed step-by-step
instructions on how to use any of the new features.
+ A news section (or link) would be added to the current landing
page with a brief "mini-release" announcement, download links and a
link to the readme style html page.
A fully fleshed out project page ought to have a news section.
+ This news section could be simply a new button on the left nav.
There ought to be an RSS version of the news section
+ We would not have demos, screen shots etc.
+ Announcements would be sent to the list and put in the blog.
+ We would not expect any supporting developer documentation.
In some cases we will need to have some developer documentation -- we
are looking at big reworkings of collections and CPIA, which will
impact the example parcels and any parcels being developed outside of
OSAF. If we don't document those changes, then we will at least
need to put up a warning telling parcel developers that their parcels
will not work after a particular alpha version.
Ted
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