Hi Jürgen,
I don't claim that a six months release schedule solves all our issues.
I know it is not too different.
But every release is a lot of work - for packagers, translators,
testers, documenters - also for people like Anita and me who help
evangelizing/promoting QGIS. In the past I tried to promote/advertise
QGIS for every release - now it became insane - it would be a full-time job!
There was probably a reason to release very often in the early days of
QGIS - when a lot of features were still missing - but there is not so
much pressure anymore these days.
I also have the impression that our testing/bug fixing period is too
short. If I am on holidays for 1-2 weeks during this time, I almost
missed my opportunity to properly test the release. It would be much
easier if it would be a 2-month period for testing/bug fixing.
And there is another thing: I usually tell the Swiss QGIS users to test
a new release - if this happens too often - they don't take you
seriously anymore - What? There was just a release a couple of weeks ago
- and now I should already test again? The reality is that many users
out there work with old releases because they can't upgrade that often -
due to whatever reasons in their organizations.
Like Régis - even if my users may only work with the LTR version - I
personally want to stay up-to-date/current with the in between releases
- test stuff early on. For me, personally, even the nightly is good
enough for the testing purpose. No need to do a full release for testing
stuff. But if it happens that feature X only works in version A, and
then stops working in the next release due to a bug, and then yet
another feature only worked in the version 2 versions ago - it really
becomes a burden and nightmare to maintain QGIS in an organization.
If we continue cranking out releases at this very fast pace - we also
risk a very strong disconnect between the actual professional users out
there (who may be 2-4 releases behind) and the nerds who can afford to
stay always at the cutting edge.
And: we could better concentrate our quality assurance efforts and
finances (employ more devs and/or let them work longer/more concentrated
on bug fixing) if we don't release too often.
Andreas
On 12.10.2015 17:49, Jürgen E. Fischer wrote:
Hi Andreas,
On Mon, 12. Oct 2015 at 13:47:03 +0200, Andreas Neumann wrote:
I know - this discussion came up repeatedly in the past - but here I
am, bringing it up again. Jürgen - please don't shoot me ;-)
As if that would help - there are far too many people out there ;) I just
wonder why this needs to be discussed again shortly before a release.
And I don't actually see any new points - this has been discussed before and I
never saw any striking arguments that would really make it clear that four
months is too short, while six months would be all that different.
That the initial LTR release wasn't any different from the other releases
stability-wise is correct. But should it? We maintain it for a year - and
that's the difference.
That bugs pop up shortly after the release is probably unavoidable unless it
gets intensive testing. Otherwise the people testing (although they probably
just want to use) a new release will easily outnumber the people testing and
fixing it before the release and hence might find serious things right after
the release - or even before we have all the packages ready.
I guess that's why we always had point releases right after the .0 releases and
I don't think that will change with a switch to a six month schedule.
As a QGIS user in government (you could also replace this by a company or
other professional users) I find the 4 month release schedule not ideal - and
quite stressful. I would rather prefer a half-year or yearly release and then
proper bug-fix releases. I also find the one month window for testing/bug
fixing too short.
For those there is the LTR. That's who we make it for. If not even those are
using it, why do we make it at all?
You might say that you can't wait twelve month for new features you fund.
Right, and that's why the release schedule is as short as it is. It's to make
new features available in a release relatively quickly. But if it's four or
six month isn't a big difference there either.
If we released every 6 months, how long would we maintain the LTR? Still a
year and every second release is a LTR? Or still every third release?
I don't really care that much if we release on a four or six month schedule
(ubuntu does six monthly releases too).
Jürgen
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