[OpenLayers-Dev] maintenance releases

[Zac Spitzer]

i've always used trunk myself + plus some patches

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 5:21 AM, Christopher Schmidt
<crschmidt at metacarta.com> wrote:
> 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
> MetaCarta
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-- 
Zac Spitzer -
http://zacster.blogspot.com
+61 405 847 168