[Mapserver-dev] 4.4 release plan

[Sean Gillies]

On Oct 6, 2004, at 2:53 PM, Daniel Morissette wrote:

> Hi developers and documentation contributors,
>
> We have started talking about a 4.4 release plan about a week ago but 
> unfortunately didn't get much formal feedback. Most of you seem to 
> silently agree with the plan, and most importantly there were no 
> formal objections, so with this email I would like to officially 
> initiate the 4.4 release process.
>
> First, I have created a new "MapServer Releases" section in the wiki:
> http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MapServerReleases
> Over time I am hoping that we would better document the release 
> process and include links to the relevant documents in there.
>
> With respect to the 4.4 release, I have added the proposed 4.4 release 
> plan in the wiki at:
> http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ReleasePlan44
>
> In previous discussions it was agreed that October 17th seemed like a 
> good date for a feature/code freeze. Based on our experience with 
> 4.2.0, we will plan for 3 betas over a 6 weeks period after the code 
> freeze. This would lead us to a final release around end of November:
>
>     * Feature/Code? freeze - October 17th
>     * 4.4.0-beta1 - October 18-20
>     * 4.4.0-beta2 - November 1st
>     * 4.4.0-beta3 - November 15th
>     * 4.4.0 (final) - November 29th (if beta3 has no critical bugs)
>
> The items (new features or improvements) that are currently worked on 
> are listed in the wiki page above, with the name of the person 
> responsible for each. If you see your name there for some tasks then I 
> would apreciate if you could update the information/status for your 
> tasks. Note that the feature freeze means that our target is to have 
> all tasks listed in the wiki completed by the code freeze date (except 
> perhaps the review/addressing of all critical bugs). Is this a 
> realistic target for everyone?
>
> I have CC'd the mapserver-docs list to keep documentation contributors 
> in the loop. Unfortunately we tend to forget about them too often, and 
> this time I would like to involve them at the beginning of the 
> process. I am hoping that Kari can coordinate with the various 
> document owners to have the docs updated for 4.4.
>
> The next step for me (and other developers) will be to walk through 
> our respective list of open bugs and try to identify all bugs that are 
> critical for 4.4. Those will be marked with the "4.4-release" target 
> milestone. There is also a discussion in another thread on the -dev 
> list about the way to handle bugs, so the way we tag bugs to be 
> addressed in 4.4 may change depending on the outcome of this 
> discussion.
>
> Okay, this is roughly what I propose. If anyone doesn't feel 
> comfortable with that plan then please don't hesitate to speak up, but 
> please do so ASAP so that we can better coordinate with everyone. 
> Comments, suggestions, flames are welcome.
>
> Regards
>
> Daniel

Thanks, Daniel!  I really appreciate that you've outlined a release 
process.
Looks good to me.

Only thing I'd like to add is that the #mapserver channel on 
freenode.net
is a great collaborative resource for fixing bugs.  It's not quite like
sitting down and sharing a keyboard and screen with another developer, 
but
it's much more direct than email.

Sean

--
Sean Gillies
sgillies at frii dot com
http://users.frii.com/sgillies