[mapguide-psc] MapGuide Release Process - proposal

[Jason Birch]

Heh.  OK, I've seen the light and agree with Daniel now.  Considering
that we will likely be starting out with not a lot of beta testers,
stabilizing early will reduce the likelihood of bugs creeping in with
new code.  I don't see a problem with shipping betas with incomplete
documentation, but I think that if a feature isn't ready for the first
beta it should be slipped to the next release.  I don't know about you,
but I work way better under a hard deadline than a soft one.

As far as dev releases go, I'd really prefer to see nightly/weekly
snapshots rather than spending release manager time on an alpha.  I'm
not sure what the logistics of creating windows/linux installers against
these snapshots would be though.  We're going to have to grow some
experience with installers.

Do numbers need to be sequential, or can we vote to skip from .12 to
.14? (or Word 2.0 to Word 6.0?) :)

Jason  

(Daniel's context stripped)
-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Spencer
Sent: Friday, October 27, 2006 08:37
To: psc at mapguide.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: [mapguide-psc] MapGuide Release Process - proposal

my intention ... which I didn't get across I guess ... was that it would
be possible to produce a first beta without having all the planned
features in it.  It would not be a free-for-all.  Only planned/approved
features could be introduced, and it would require an additional beta
cycle and potentially delay the final release, but it could be a useful
tool if the rest of the features are ready for wider testing and the
missing features are relatively minor or have a low risk of introducing
bugs - for instance, missing documentation.

This could also be handled through the dev releases you mention, I
guess.

I'd like to let the process stand as is until I hear from the others on
the PSC.  I've already had push-back from Jason on being strict about
not adding features after Release Candidate (but I'm pretty firm on that
one!)

I like this idea.  This could also be considered an Alpha release -
known issues and not feature complete, but perhaps useful.  PSC, want to
include a Snapshot Release?