[Qgis-developer] Release plans for QGIS 0.11.0 and on to 1.0

[Tim Sutton]

Dear QGISsers


This friday past, we held a release team meeting to plan for the next  
release (0.11.0 'Metis'). We would like to shift the scheduled  
release data back to June 30. How does that work for devs out there?  
We had on our release roadmap that this release was going to be a map  
composer focused release, but as I understand it, it will need more  
time? Current stuff planned for 0.11.0 that I am aware of:

- performance improvement work (is anyone actively working on this?)
- revision of UI for consistency and to improve useability and  
general 'fit and finish' (TS)
- bug fixing (ALL)
- Qt3Support removal (Tom)
- Code formatting revision (Jef)
- qml support for rasters (done) (TS)
- list view & filtering for GRASS toolbox (TS)
- python maintenance (Martin)

It would be great to get a heads up on what others are working on so  
we can start planning for press releases etc. Going by June 30 as a  
target release date, I proposed the following dates for the release:

June  9 - Feature freeze - bug fixing only from here on forward
June 16 - String freeze and call for translations
June 23 - Branch for release & call for packaging
June 30 - Unleash Metis on the world...

Does that work ok for everyone?

I suggest Jef put his code formatting stuff through just before we do  
branch for release so that there is no active work going on in trunk  
- though this may impact people working out in branches so is it  
maybe better to wait for just before 1.0 before Jef puts the  
formatting updates in?

Following the above plan, we will have another 1.5 months until  
August 15 - the planned release date for QGIS 1.0. So ideally 0.11.0  
is the last chance to get those last minute features in, and with the  
exception of labelling, composer and raster catalogues, no new  
features should be going into trunk post 0.11.0 release. If we can  
stick to that, the community team folks will have a decent  
opportunity to update the docs (but ignoring the 3 areas mentioned  
above for now) so that we can have up to the minute docs to accompany  
the 1.0 release.

I'm anticipating a 1.0.1 release if possible in time for FOSS4G2008  
(late Sept) which will be purely bug fixing for anything we missed in  
1.0 release.

We also need to finalise our Hack fest - can we set a final date etc  
over the next week Paolo? Its looking like mid-late June is going to  
work best for me  since I will be starting a new job in July. I see  
on the hackfest page that June is good for some other folks too.  
Could we firm up a date for this?

Regards

Tim Sutton
QGIS Project Steering Committee Member - Release Manager
Visit http://qgis.org for a great open source GIS
openModeller Desktop Developer
Visit http://openModeller.sf.net for a great open source ecological  
niche modelling tool
Home Page: http://tim.linfiniti.com
Skype: timlinux
Irc: timlinux on #qgis at freenode.net