On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 3:05 AM, Chad <[email protected]> wrote:
> Looking ahead to 1.19, I'd like to do the same and branch soon after 1.18 has
> been dropped. Since 1.19's a little further out and hasn't started taking 
> shape
> yet, I'd like to go ahead and propose what sort of release we should aim for.
>
> Going back over the past couple of releases, we've had quite a few "rewrites"
> of major portions of code. While these are a necessary part of the process of
> developing MW, they are difficult to review due to their complexity. This
> complexity also makes it more likely for things to break. If I may be so bold,
> I would like to ask that 1.19 not contain any of these rewrites. Let's focus 
> on
> making it a bugfix/cleanup release. Personally I think it would make for a 
> very
> clean and polished release, as well as reducing the time for us to review and
> ship it.
>
I like this idea, although it does mean pushing back the
iwtransclusion branch merge to 1.20, presumably. But then you say:

> If we go this route, I don't see any reason we couldn't ship 1.19 by year end
> (or if we really push, 11.11.11, as the other thread suggested).
We'd be branching 1.18 in mid-May (when 1.17 goes final). If we
release a beta of 1.19 in November and it's a small release, we should
branch in October (or branch in November and release by year end).
That means there'd be 5 or 6 months of development in 1.19. I'm on
board with shooting for a clean and polished release, but we shouldn't
make /any/ release longer than 4 months, and this one should probably
be 3 IMO. Also, 6 months is a long time for a ban on rewrites.

I've seen a few suggestions about release schedules on this list now,
and all of them seem to, implicitly or explicitly, accept that
releases contain outrageous amounts of code and take more than 3
months to stabilize, just because that's what happened with 1.17.
Instead, I'd like us to be ambitious about not repeating the 1.17
fiasco, and aiming for a shorter cycle. Tim is right in the other
thread that cycles can be too short, but I think once every 3-4 months
is good middle ground. In any case, if stabilizing a release to even
get it to the first beta takes more than a month, something is
fundamentally wrong IMO.

> think it would
> put us in a really good place to move forward into 2012, and help get us back
> into a somewhat regular release pattern.
>
I agree and applaud this goal, though per the above I'm not entirely
sure we mean the same thing when we say "regular release pattern".

Roan Kattouw (Catrope)

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