[Qgis-developer] Four month cycle too fast

[Alex Mandel]

On 06/18/2014 11:34 PM, Andreas Neumann wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> At the Swiss QGIS user meeting yesterday there were some discussions
> whether people can cope with the 4 month release schedule and there were
> a number of users who said that this way too fast for them. By the time
> they could properly test a release, the next release is already there.
> 
> Bigger organizations (government organizations and bigger companies)
> have to test a release, package it with IT, test again. They often can't
> install QGIS themselves (don't have installation privileges) but have to
> ask IT to do it for them. This is a time-consuming process.
> 
> I would propose to try a six month release cycle with two months feature
> freeze for testing (see also my previous mail about a request for more
> time for testing/bug fixing). Even a yearly release cycle would be fine,
> if there could be a bug-fix release.
> 
> PostgreSQL has a yearly release cycle and it works really well I think -
> both for them as a project and for us as customers.
> 
> Andreas
> 

Except Postgis does bugfix releases and doesn't cram as many new
features. As discussed in great length in previous threads, it's the
pace of new features that makes bugfix releases somewhat inplausible.

I'm not saying that 4 months is right, what about alternating
stable/experimental like GRASS? So that big orgs only think about every
8 months? Really a big org can decide to skip a release if they want.

Every 6 is also possible, the key is timing, right now is a very good
time to release to be ready for FOSS4g.

Thanks for the feedback, since this the first attempt at the 4 month
it's good to get some information from users.

Thanks,
Alex