On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:26 PM, Nathaniel Smith <n...@pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 7:03 PM, Charles R Harris > <charlesr.har...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Now that 1.7 is nearing release, it's time to look forward to the 1.8 > > release. I'd like us to get back to the twice yearly schedule that we > tried > > to maintain through the 1.3 - 1.6 releases, so I propose a June release > as a > > goal. Call it the Spring Cleaning release. As to content, I'd like to see > > the following. > > > > Removal of Python 2.4-2.5 support. > > Removal of SCons support. > > The index work consolidated. > > Initial stab at removing the need for 2to3. See Pauli's PR for scipy. > > Miscellaneous enhancements and fixes. > > I'd actually like to propose a faster release cycle than this, even. > Perhaps 3 months between releases; 2 months from release n to the > first beta of n+1? > > The consequences would be: > * Changes get out to users faster. > * Each release is smaller, so it's easier for downstream projects to > adjust to each release -- instead of having this giant pile of changes > to work through all at once every 6-12 months > * End-users are less scared of updating, because the changes aren't so > overwhelming, so they end up actually testing (and getting to take > advantage of) the new stuff more. > * We get feedback more quickly, so we can fix up whatever we break > while we still know what we did. > * And for larger changes, if we release them incrementally, we can get > feedback before we've gone miles down the wrong path. > * Releases come out on time more often -- sort of paradoxical, but > with small, frequent releases, beta cycles go smoother, and it's > easier to say "don't worry, I'll get it ready for next time", or > "right, that patch was less done than we thought, let's take it out > for now" (also this is much easier if we don't have another years > worth of changes committed on top of the patch!). > * If your schedule does slip, then you still end up with a <6 month > release cycle. > > 1.6.x was branched from master in March 2011 and released in May 2011. > 1.7.x was branched from master in July 2012 and still isn't out. But > at least we've finally found and fixed the second to last bug! > > Actually, the first branch was late Dec 2011, IIRC, maybe Feb 2012. We've had about a year delay and I'm not convinced it was worth it. > Wouldn't it be nice to have a 2-4 week beta cycle that only found > trivial and expected problems? We *already* have 6 months worth of > feature work in master that won't be in the *next* release. > > Note 1: if we do do this, then we'll also want to rethink the > deprecation cycle a bit -- right now we've sort of vaguely been saying > "well, we'll deprecate it in release n and take it out in n+1. > Whenever that is". 3 months definitely isn't long enough for a > deprecation period, so if we do do this then we'll want to deprecate > things for multiple releases before actually removing them. Details to > be determined. > > Deprecations should probably be time based. > Note 2: in this kind of release schedule, you definitely don't want to > say "here are the features that will be in the next release!", because > then you end up slipping and sliding all over the place. Instead you > say "here are some things that I want to work on next, and we'll see > which release they end up in". Since we're already following the rule > that nothing goes into master until it's done and tested and ready for > release anyway, this doesn't really change much. > > Thoughts? > > I think three months is a bit short. Much will depend on the release manager and I not sure what Andrej's plans are. I'd happily nominate you for that role ;) Chuck
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