[OpenLayers-Dev] 2.7 on the Horizon

[Tim Schaub]

Thanks for kicking this off Erik.

I'm fully in favor of churning out a small feature/bugfix release by end 
of Sept.

Tim

Erik Uzureau wrote:
> Dear dev,
> 
> Hola, amigos. I know it's been a long time since I rapped at ya, but
> things in Boston have been hot and I haven't had a spare minute for
> OpenLayers for months.
> 
> With the FOSS4G 2008 Conference coming up, some of us have been
> looking at the 2.7 release page[1] and brainstorming as to whether or
> not we might have something new to show in Cape Town.
> 
> A quick glance at the list shows that we've already closed about 40
> tickets from the 2.7 milestone... certainly doesn't hold a candle to
> the nearly 300 closed tickets from 2.6, but then again since when have
> we been in the candle business?
> 
> In the wake of 2.6 and generally over the last few months, there has
> been a lot of talk of doing more regular, smaller releases. What if we
> give it a try? Put our elbow grease where our mouth is, if you will.
> The rally cry, then, is...
> 
> 
> Let's show the world OpenLayers can do a Full Release in 2.5 Months!
> 
> 
> Back when I used to work in the software industry, we used to say,
> "Time, Resources, and Work... you can only fix two of them." Now that
> may sound goofy, but I think it's a reasonable game plan. The
> resources we have (people hours) are pretty much fixed by themselves,
> so if we're fixing the time, then that leaves us with Work as the
> floating operator in the equation.
> 
> What this means, quite simply, is that instead of our usual hanging
> around and waiting for all the appropriate tickets to be closed before
> making a release (bending time for work), this time around we are
> going to have to take the not-quite-fixed bugs and the
> still-debating-it features and simply push them off into the 2.8
> release.
> 
> It is, to be sure, a distinctly different approach from releases past.
> But OpenLayers is still a relatively young project, and the people
> that build it are some of the smartest and most agile developers out
> there... so if ever there has been a time to experiment with something
> new, that time is now.
> 
> History says we generally take 2-3 weeks to go from rc1 to a final
> release, so I figure if we set the target date of September 1 for 2.7
> rc1, then we can safely predict a final release of 2.7 to show at the
> conference at the end of September.
> 
> What do you think?
> 
> I've talked this over with both Tim Schaub and Chris Schmidt and they
> both seem to be in favor of giving it a shot. I think it would be good
> for us to hear what other people think of this idea so please voice
> your support or concern here to the dev list.
> 
> 
> I'm going to start today by doing a pass through the tickets and
> sifting out those which I don't think will get done in time for the
> September 1 RC, so that we have a clearer picture of what is possible.
> Given the time frame and the number of open tickets, the majority of
> what will end up in 2.7 will be bug fixes, rather than features, and I
> think we should all be comfortable with that.
> 
> Now It goes without saying that if I move a ticket that you think is
> really important, you should feel free to move it back (but please
> include a clear comment as to both "why" you think it should be in 2.7
> and "how" -- ie who is going to do the work). Overall I think we will
> see a lot more ticket movement in general, since we will be keeping to
> a hard deadline.
> 
> I will be out of the office and off the internet for the next three
> weeks on holiday (por fin!). On return, I will be heading out to
> Boston, where some of the TOPP developers will be getting together
> with the OL team at MetaCarta for a week of concentrated work on
> OpenLayers. Hopefully after that week we will have a much clearer
> picture of where we are in terms of what can be squeezed into the 2.7
> release, so that we can spend the month of August developing like mad
> and tying up loose ends.
> 
> 
> In closing, I ask once again that you voice your opinion on what I've
> proposed in this email. It goes without saying that we need the
> support of the whole community to pull this off, so it will help all
> of us to hear what you have to say. Furthermore, if you have time over
> the next few weeks, take a look over the tickets that you are
> interested/involved in and try to think seriously about whether or not
> you can help them to get done and into trunk by September 1.
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance for your comments and participation!
> Erik
> 
> [1] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/2.7
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> Dev at openlayers.org
> http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo/dev
> 
> !DSPAM:4033,486d413157087082231907!
>