[OpenLayers-Dev] maintenance releases

[Christopher Schmidt]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 01:00:12PM -0600, Tim Schaub wrote:
> 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?

I'd be interested in what number of people are running applications off 
trunk. I'm sure that some of our contributors are -- for example, anyone
who has written a patch is probably at least running with a version which
includes their patch -- but my experience is that I don't see a lot of people
asking for help who aren't running on 2.8 currently.

Generally, when I start seeing that change is when I start suggesting
it's time for a release :)

I'm not against maintenance releases, though. When OpenLayers was under
more rapid development, the longer process was more neccesary. Now that
we're in a mostly static state -- minor features and bugfixes, rather than
significant new core developments -- there's not as much risk to including
most of the current changes to trunk in a release without a ton of testing.

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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