[Qgis-developer] Stress about release plans

[Jonathan Moules]

Hi Jürgen,

Fixes and features are released every four months - including a four weeks
> window for testing and fixing.  Which is of course not as good as LTS, but
> it's apparently feasible and working.


But is it working? I believe the point of an LTS is that each version is
more stable than the last and that there are no new features which in turn
means no new bugs should be introduced. Everyone wants QGIS to be stable of
course, but adding new features by definition isn't going to be compatible
with that - New features introduce new bugs irrespective of the amount of
testing there is. It's far less common (but by no means unknown) for a
bugfix to introduce a new bug.

I don't know the story of why having two branches failed in the past, but
the fact that this topic is raised every couple of months by new people
should indicate that there's a strong desire for it within the community,
so maybe it's worth investigating again.
What caused it to fail last time? Is there anything the community can learn
from that? Can QGIS learn from any of the other Open Source communities
that successfully maintain multiple branches? What resources are needed to
make it happen?

Cheers,
Jonathan


On 22 July 2014 11:16, Jürgen E. <jef at norbit.de> wrote:

> Hi Lene,
>
> On Mon, 21. Jul 2014 at 15:35:55 +0000, Lene Fischer wrote:
> > What if we had :
> > · A long term stable version for ex. 12 months with bugfix only
> > · A developer version for 4 months with new features and bugfixes =>
> Stable
> >   version with short bugfix-period => New developer??????..
>
> Not much news there.  This comes up again and again.
>
> We already tried to maintain two branches in the past and failed.  I'm not
> sure
> if we still would, but I don't see any big changes that makes it less
> likely
> either.
>
> And that's why we have the tight release schedule now - it's there to both
> get
> bugfixes out and new features in in a reasonable time frame and with
> minimum
> extra or duplicate effort (which backports and packing are - not a awful
> lot,
> but some).
>
> Fixes and features are released every four months - including a four weeks
> window for testing and fixing.  Which is of course not as good as LTS, but
> it's
> apparently feasible and working.
>
>
> Jürgen
>
> --
> Jürgen E. Fischer           norBIT GmbH             Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
> Dipl.-Inf. (FH)             Rheinstraße 13          Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
> Software Engineer           D-26506 Norden
> http://www.norbit.de
> QGIS release manager (PSC)  Germany                    IRC: jef on FreeNode
>
> --
> norBIT Gesellschaft fuer Unternehmensberatung und Informationssysteme mbH
> Rheinstrasse 13, 26506 Norden
> GF: Jelto Buurman, HR: Amtsgericht Emden, HRB 5502
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-developer mailing list
> Qgis-developer at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
>

-- 
This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may 
contain confidential, sensitive or personal information and should be 
handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to 
receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to 
anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify 
the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including 
without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or 
monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/qgis-developer/attachments/20140722/48e13404/attachment.html>