Hi Dave, et. al.
Thanks for publishing the new release process. It looks great.
Dave wrote:
* Tagged in SVN
+0 It's not obvious that this improves our ability to track down
issues. If it only shows up on a milestone build and not after, does
it matter?
Yes, that is true. I would like to be able to reproduce milestone
builds, but all we really need is an SVN rev number for that -- and
the SVN rev number is now baked into the builds.
I think in some instances it may be desirable to create a branch for a
milestone build. Suppose there are bugs in the milestone release, but a
new (and less stable) feature has been checked in on the trunk. If
someone submits a fix against a milestone build it could be applied to
both the trunk and the milestone branch.
The idea is that milestone releases won't go through formal testing and
voting, but they are checkpoints that people could submit fixes for.
In fact, I think it is worth considering not even making "releases"
(i.e. binaries) for the milestones, instead requiring developers to
download and build themselves. I say this because I have the feeling
that the users of Roller who are most likely to use or test milestone
builds are probably using custom builds anyway.
The idea is that milestone builds would serve the function of the
"monthly" releases in the old process and that final releases would be
the ones that go through more formal testing and be made available as
binaries. People who test or deploy milestone releases could note which
configurations and platforms they have tested on the Wiki.
And can we streamline the voting process so
that it does not take months to also get a milestone release out. How
can we streamline the process? One way is to NOT require a formal vote
for milestone buildand instead just use lazy consensus.
Don't even vote. Just publish it.
Good, but just for the purpose of coordination, I think the person
making the milestone should at least say "I'm going to make a make a
milestone build this week, anybody object?" And if nobody objects in a
day or so, they should proceed with the build.
Right. I think milestone builds should have an informal consensus of
developers that they are reasonably stable. Some discussion on the list
would be a good thing.
-- Sean
