[Qgis-developer] [Fwd: Re: [Qgis-user] Poll on website]

[Mailing Lists]

Hi

On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 7:44 PM, Martin Dobias<wonder.sk at gmail.com> wrote:

8<-------------snip-------------------

>
> My biggest concern is about the naming: calling 1.x versions
> "unstable" seems unfair to me. Any greater features are developed and
> tested in branches and merged once they're ready. So the trunk is +-
> stable and virtually ready for a release at any time. That's why I
> would prefer to mark also 1.x releases "stable" or avoid
> stable/unstable completely. Every 1.x release brings many new features
> that make 1.0 look old :-)

Yes developing in branches helps keeps trunk more or less release
ready but introducing new features inevitably will introduce new bugs
/ crash points. Although we have tried to introduce a culture of unit
testing, this as not reallly taken hold, and that means we put the
burden of testing and finding those bugs and crash points on our
users. If we are going to do that it seems to me only fair that we
indicate this with the 'unstable' moniker. There is a good quote that
says 'software without unit tests is broken by design'....

>
> There's also a matter of promotion: currently the QGIS home page
> states just under the big logo there's version 1.0.2. But there's also
> a newer version that many users probably just don't know about! And
> sincerely, the "unstable" version doesn't sound like a choice for
> production use. That's maybe also the reason why there are some people
> prefering 1.0.x releases.
>
> On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 6:26 PM, Paolo Cavallini<cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:
>> Jürgen E. Fischer ha scritto:
>>
>>> But I also believe that any manpower spend on 1.0 is mostly wasted - no matter
>>> how tiny.
>
> That's my opinion too. And if there are companies/organizations which
> really need to have a version with long term support, they should
> take care of backporting the fixes from the trunk. For a decent
> backport, it's really necessary to also compile and test it, not just
> commit the backport - waste of our time.

I've been swamped with (non qgis :-( ) work the last few months, but I
plan to go throught the commits since 1.1 was released and backport
what is possible.



>
>>>> so I would now vote for releasing frequently a new version
>>>> from trunk, when we reach a general consensus that the current trunk is
>>>> stable enough to be released (as it happens now, IMHO).

If we release now we miss out on the cool new features Martin & co
have in the pipeline....

>>>
>>> And I think that's already the plan.  1.2 will be released when the
>>> symbology-ng & labeling stuff was merged.
>>
>> Why don't we release another version *before* this? It is possible that
>> major merges will cause some instability, therefore pushing forward 1.2.
>
> Recently I've been wondering what will be the best time for new
> release (1.2). In about two weeks we're going to finish the
> qgis-mapper project and there are some more functionality besides new
> symbology and labeling I'd like to put into trunk: most importantly
> OpenStreetMap provider+plugin, topology checking plugin and vector
> features caching. But that's probably too much for one release... So
> one possibility would be to release 1.2 with just some of the features
> and get the rest into 1.3. Opinions?

If all the new features are ready, I'd vote to introduce them all in
the 1.2 release. If Martin prefers, we can do a release of 1.2 now as
suggested above and then merge in his new stuff and do a 1.3 release
in the not too distant future....

Regards


-- 
Tim Sutton - QGIS Project Steering Committee Member (Release  Manager)
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