[OpenLayers-Dev] maintenance releases

[Bart van den Eijnden]

Picking up on an old thread, IIRC we had quite a bit of consensus on this.

So what do we do for 2.9, a quick maintenance release or a normal full-blown release?

Best regards,
Bart

On Sep 15, 2009, at 9:00 PM, 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?
> Tim
> 
> [1] http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/Release/Procedure
> 
> -- 
> Tim Schaub
> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
> Expert service straight from the developers.
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