[OpenLayers-Dev] maintenance releases

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

We periodically discuss releasing on a fixed schedule.  Though a few 
releases have come close to sticking to a schedule, my impression is 
that it has been a tough to pull off.  It is also my impression that the 
release process feels onerous enough to enough people that we are 
collectively avoiding it.

I'm interested in discussing doing more "maintenance" releases between 
minor releases.  What exactly would change about the release process [1] 
I'm not sure, but the goal would be to make it less work overall.

While this might seem extreme, I'm curious what people would think about 
kicking out maintenance releases *without* going through the release 
candidate cycle.  Taking this further, a maintenance release manager 
could decide to stick to a schedule and release even if there were known 
regressions.

While the result may be something of questionable value, I do think it 
would bring some benefits.  My impression is that there are a lot of 
people running applications off the trunk currently.  I also imagine a 
fair number are running "sandbox" functionality or their own patched 
versions.  Having more frequent releases would not be that much 
different than pegging applications to a specific version of the trunk. 
  I think all would agree this is safer than having an application run 
off the head revision.

This would also have the benefit for contributors of more quickly seeing 
their contribution in an official release - potentially encouraging more 
contributions.

Obviously there would be details to work out about the process, but I 
would suggest a pared down version of the major/minor release process - 
with leeway for the maintenance release manager to decide on some 
specifics (e.g. if all tests pass on this date, bump tickets, release, 
and make notes about known issues).

Thoughts?
Tim

[1] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/Procedure

-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.