The release cycle of most of the popular softwares (including open source ones) has a public beta phase. The beta term is well understood by people and will set the right expectations (compared to just saying Oless stable that previous *.0 releases¹).
If we can clearly state the guidelines for calling a release beta vs ga , I think we can avoid having too much debate each time over calling the release beta vs ga. How about this criteria for calling a release beta ? - The first release of new version of pig (0.x) will be a beta. Once a beta release has been around for a minimum of two weeks, and all known regressions have been fixed, the next minor release with the fixes will be called ga. -Thejas The version number could be 0.9.0, but in the release notes and download pages, I think we should On 6/6/11 4:25 PM, "Alan Gates" <[email protected]> wrote: > I like 0.9.0 over beta. The code has undergone a lot of testing, just not as > much as previous x.0 releases. My other concern is that in the future we may > end up with beta2 and beta3 releases, and with arguments about whether a given > release is a beta or ga, and what makes a release beta bs ga (the definition > can't be that Yahoo has tested it). Sticking to a numbering scheme seems > cleaner. > > Alan. > > Sent from my iPhone > > On Jun 3, 2011, at 8:08, Thejas M Nair <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> >> >> On 6/2/11 2:09 PM, "Olga Natkovich" <[email protected]> wrote: >> >>> Hi, >> >>> seemed to make most sense to the group. This rule would be combined with >>> another one - that no features or non-P1 bug fixes would be allowed after >>> the >>> branch is cut to guarantee branch stability. >>> >> >> Clarifying for sake users who are not familiar with pig release process - A >> new svn branch is created when a new version of pig, when the code freeze >> happens. New features and non-P1 bugs continue to get committed to trunk >> after that. >> >>> We would need to clearly state that this release is likely to be less stable >>> than previous .0 releases (especially given the amount of change that went >>> in.). Once we get sufficient number of bug fixes, we would call for 0.9.1 >>> release which would be similar in stability to our earlier .0 release. This >> >> I think it is better to explicitly call the initial release a beta release. >> Ie 0.9.beta . Around 4 weeks after the beta release, we can have a vote for >> the stable release. >> >> -Thejas >> > --
