Tonight's update is a long one, and is going to cover a few things more than normal. It's time to start looking forward, in addition to talking about the immediate future.
*What Got Done?* This week was a really good week. We got 2.1.1 out the door. In the process, we got a nicely defined release process. It's fairly hefty, but it looks like it will help to reduce(maybe even eliminate) release problems. I've also begun working on a major documentation revamp. I've updated the SF.net pages, so that the front page for the TG1 and TG2 projects helps to define what people see. I've also updated a pair of wikipedia pages that were out of date. Small updates, to be sure, but they were needed to reflect the current status and compatibilities of the project. I've also been paying more attention to what's going on in the world in terms of where/how we're mentioned. I really need to get more info from Google, but for now I'm at least paying more attention to twitter. In short, it's been a busy week :) *Where Are We Now?* We're back underway. We've spent the past six months working through the infrastructure, working through the stuff that gets in our way, and feeling mired and unable to make real progress. Well, progress is now possible. Our infrastructure helps us now, instead of hinders us. We've got clear goals for the next release (in fact, I'd say it looks like we've got about 20 of them<https://sourceforge.net/p/turbogears2/tickets/milestone/2.1.2/>). The summer blues are hitting us slightly (judging by the posting numbers), but I believe we've at least managed to halt the downward slide. Now we have to work on climbing back up. More on that below. *What Will Get Done This Week?* This coming week is going to see me working on the docs pretty much exclusively. I want to get some work done on the new layout so that we can show it to people for real with the next release, instead of just as a bunch of .rst files. Now, why just the docs this week? Well, that leads into: *What Are The Future Plans? *Before I dig into my thoughts for the future, I want to stress something: None of the following is written in stone. I want feedback. This is how I'm thinking right now. If anybody sees things they don't like or that could make problems, please speak up. I'd like to hear it sooner rather than later. The Release Schedule:* *Back on Jan 28, I announced myself getting back to work on TG. On Feb 8, I committed to writing a weekly status report. In that same vein, I'm making another commitment to the community: Regular releases. We are going to see releases occur once per month for the foreseeable future. Specifically, I'm going to make releases happen on the first Wednesday of the month on or after the 15th of the month. This means that, for the remainder of the year, the releases will come out on these dates: July 20, 2011 August 17, 2011 September 21, 2011 October 19, 2011 November 16, 2011 December 21, 2011 What version will be released depends on how much gets done. I'd love to see 2.2 come out by the end of the year, but I don't know if that will be feasible. To do that, we have to meet a lot of goals. The Goals for 2.2: - 100% code coverage. This means that every line of code that comes in the TurboGears 2.x core repository has at least one test case for it. Every line of the templates in tg.devtools will also have at least one test case. - New documentation. I'm actually making a new documentation version which is focusing on taking a developer from the "I have an idea" phase all the way through to the "It's deployed and in maintenance" phase. The layout I'm usingis actually quite suitable for being a book. In fact, the plan is to use the Sphinx sources to create static HTML pages, along with an epub and a PDF that we can sell on Lulo. - As many of the bugs fixed from SF.net as possible. My ideal is to have them all fixed, though I somehow doubt that will be able to happen. Website Redesign: Yes, another one. We have something that's better than what we had, to be sure. We still need to improve it. To that end, sometime around August/September, I'm going to focus on getting a new version of the website visible and available. I plan to incorporate a feed widget that will allow people to see the activity that's happening all around the web about TurboGears. ML feeds, tracker feeds, twitter feeds, blog feeds, everything. In turn, it will allow people to subscribe to a feed from it that will keep people very informed of TG everywhere. We're also going to need to get Advertising: I'm planning on getting the TG logo put on t-shirts, baseball caps, sew-on/iron-on patches, mugs, maybe other things. I want people in the real world to know I'm supporting TG, and I want them to ask me about it. I'm also thinking of using AdWords (and maybe others) to do some online advertising. My Personal Work Patterns: I'm going to change my method of working on TG a bit. The release cycle allows for (roughly) four weeks of work. So, the week and a half after a release will see me focused on the docs. The next two weeks will be bug fixing and test writing. The remainder of the time will be me focused on getting the next release ready to go. Those times are slightly fluid, since it's not exactly four weeks, but that provides a rough breakdown. Somewhere in all of that, I'm also going to be working on the tutorial application for the book, called "Hiring Pond" (more on that later this week, when I've got something done for the book for it). Anyway, that's my current plans for the remainder of the year. Thoughts, anybody? -- Michael J. Pedersen My IM IDs: Jabber/[email protected], AIM/pedermj022171 Yahoo/pedermj2002, MSN/[email protected] My LinkedIn Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeljpedersen Twitter: pedersentg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TurboGears Trunk" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/turbogears-trunk?hl=en.
