[OpenLayers-Dev] Release Goal

[christopher.schmidt at nokia.com]

Hi,

In order to get the mobile features we've developed in the past short while
out to people in a release, I'd like to suggest that we pursue a goal of 
having an RC cut in about two weeks (the week of March 14th). 

The goal of this release is:

  Better Mobile Support for OpenLayers

There are many things that fall under this: UI changes, size reductions, 
etc. Things which do not specifically address this goal may be chopped
if time gets short.

I think that we will likely have a slightly longer RC period than usual,
but I also think that we won't see a lot of testing on *non*-mobile until
we get an RC cut, so I'm hoping that doing an RC slightly earlier will
let us have a reasonable ship date (possibly by the end of March).

I would like to encourage anyone who is interested in a patch getting 
into this release to do a diligent review of the patch -- even if you're
not a committer. With sufficient review from developers who are not committers,
it should be easier to find bugs before a committer reviews it, which
should help get more patches into trunk.

A thorough review should include applying the patch, determining that it
delivers the functionality, and experimentation with the examples to determine
whether it breaks anything that might be affected by it. It should also include
running the tests, at least on a real browser, and if possible, also on IE.

As always, a big part of whether a change makes it in is *thorough unit tests*.
Unit tests do not always have to be gigantic: testing small functionality with
mocking is a solid way to ensure that the behavior is what you think it is. 
(For an example of a simple patch and simple tests that ensure that the behavior
is correct, see 
  http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/attachment/ticket/2780/2780.0.patch
)

If you have reviewed a patch, please add a comment to that ticket, explaining
what you tested, how you confirmed the behavior, etc. and if you found any
issues while testing. (If you did find problems, feel free to update the 
status to "needs more work" rather than "Review".) 

With more thorough reviews from other developers, and a dedicated effort 
(especially on the new mobile-specific stuff) I think that a release
candidate target is reasonable including the functionality people are
excited to see in a release of OpenLayers.

I'll volunteer to do the releng duties this time -- and hopefully,
turn everything that I do as a releng person into checked-in tools
so that in the future, releasing is as easy as pressing a button :)

Thanks,
Christopher Schmidt
OpenLayers