[Qgis-developer] Release plan for 0.9

[Tim Sutton]

Dear QGIS developers

QGIS 0.8.1 is released and with it my first stint in my new role as
Release Manager. I would like to say a very big 'thank you' to all the
people who helped squash bugs, submit patches, convert the build
system in 0.8 branch to cmake, update the msys environment and so on.
Since it was my first time orchestrating a release, there were a few
kinks in the process which hopefully will not be repeated in the next
release.

At this point we can continue with another maintenance release
(0.8.2), or move straight on to QGIS 0.9 which will put the eagerly
awaited python language bindings into the general public domain. I'm
in favour of focussing all our efforts on 0.9 now and having something
ready for the upcoming FOSS4GEO conference in Canada.

I am going to be out of contact for the next week, and when I return I
would like to start things rolling towards the release of 0.9. Its a
short schedule I propose so I'm putting this email out there now
before I leave to get you all thinking about the  release. I believe
we are pretty much feature complete for 0.9 and I'm suggesting the
following time line:

- Complete feature freeze as of Monday 16 July 2007 - only bug fixes
after this point
- UI String freeze as of 30 July 2007 - call for translators
- 13 August - preview 1 release and call for packagers to make test packages
- 26 August - release of 0.9

The FOSS4GEO conference is from 24 - 27 September so we will have a
month more or less after 0.9 to possibly to do a short, sharp 0.9.1
maintenance release if any issues are found.

- Does my timeline seem do-able?
- Are there any major objections to moving straight on to 0.9?
- Are the translators / devs / document writers / packagers able to
meet such a deadline?
- Is everyone happy with calling this release Ganymede (as suggested
on IRC by Tisham I think)?
- Can we remove all of the auto* stuff from SVN so mandating that
packagers do their stuff with cmake?


QGIS 0.9 is going to be a fantastic release and I'm really looking
forward to seeing this happen.

Best regards



-- 
Tim Sutton
QGIS Project Steering Committee Member - Release  Manager
Visit http://qgis.org for a great open source GIS
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Home Page: http://tim.linfiniti.com
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