[mapguide-psc] MapGuide Release Process - proposal

[Daniel Morissette]

Paul Spencer wrote:
> Based on my email, I've prepared a wiki page documenting my proposal for 
> a release process for MapGuide.  Please feel free to edit and/or provide 
> feedback via the list.
> 
> Please note that it will be hard to perfect this until we actually do a 
> release or two.
> 
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/MapGuide_Release_Process
> 

Nice document. Here are a few comments based on my experience with 
MapServer:

1- The current document seems to suggest that functional changes and new 
features are allowed up to the first release candidate. I'm not sure 
this is a good idea. If you follow that logic, then new features or 
functional changes can be added anytime during the beta test period... 
very likley to introduce new bugs while others are working hard to 
stabilize the software... leading to a never-ending release cycle.

For MapServer, we have a feature freeze date that marks the beginning of 
the release cycle. The feature freeze is announced in advance when we 
introduce the release plan and no new features or functional changes are 
allowed after that date. Beta1 is usually produced in the week that 
follows the feature freeze. This means that all betas contain the same 
features, just with more bug fixes but hopefully with no new bugs. This 
also allows the doc team to start polishing the docs at the beginning of 
the release cycle and we hopefully end up with docs in sync with the 
software at on the day of the final release (which is the way it should 
be, right?)... but more importantly, the feature freeze at the beginning 
of the release cycle is to allow the software to really stabilize during 
the release cycle and prevent the introduction of new bugs during that 
period.

2- Under release type, should we also have a "dev release", "dev 
snapshot" or something along those lines that can be produced and 
officially labelled anytime during the development cycle to make a much 
wanted feature available "as-is" and right away without going through 
the full release process? I'm just asking. I proposed that for MapServer 
way back when and it was turned down, but I thought I would raise that 
possibility with you just in case you see a need for that.

Daniel
-- 
Daniel Morissette
http://www.mapgears.com/