Elias Torres wrote:
I've been with Roller for sometime now but it is until recently that I have been working closely with to the development lifecycle. At the end of 3.0 we submitted proposals for working on 3.1 and those got approved so we are making plans based on those proposals and dates estimates. However, there have been a couple or more proposals that appear last minute before code freeze and get submitted/implemented. I'm just trying to figure out our process and what's good practice and what's not. I'm not sure how would you feel if I submitted a few proposals this week on behalf of IBM's needs as opposed to waiting for 3.2. I'm not saying that we can't work like this, but I'm trying to understand what is acceptable or not to this community. I definitely don't want to misbehave in the friendly/cooperative environment we have today.
This is a good question. I think that the process itself is relatively straight forward. You propose something, get people to comment/vote on it, once it's approved you work on it and commit it. I'm not sure if you had questions about that part?
As far as timing for work is concerned, I think that is totally up to the community. I don't think anyone should ever feel that they can't offer up a proposal at any given time. Ideally the development cycle is always working, regardless of what the release cycle may be. So if you have new proposals then I would definitely suggest you flush them out and go ahead and send them to the list.
Once a proposal has been suggested then it is up to the actual community to be vocal about if/when/how a proposal should be handled. So if you propose something and I think it needs revising or should be scheduled for a later release then I can say so. We then let everyone weigh in on the subject and decide on the outcome from that.
I am fine with any new 3.1 proposals that get submitted now. I think it would be the same process as usual, where the developer community should review the proposals and make a comment if there was some doubt about the proposal fitting in with the 3.1 release. If nobody objects to putting the proposal in the 3.1 release then no worries.
As I look into the future of IBM and Roller I'm not sure we'll have tons of proposals closely tied to the schedule because we won't be able to keep up with Roller's short lifecycle. Our direction is going to be more like: get a feature implemented in whichever release it happens to fall under and we backport it to our internal version until we make the jump to let's say 4.0.
I think that is fine. I don't think we should ever expect all developers to be working on the same schedule, and that's why it's best if we can keep the development cycle constantly in motion. In this particular case the best thing may be for you to work out of a branch for the things you work on since the main concern would be timing. That way you can easily keep up with what's happening in the Roller trunk and you are also able to easily share/collaborate on the work you are doing in your branch. Then whenever it's ready to be committed then it can be merged back into the trunk.
-- Allen
-Elias
