[Qgis-developer] Four month cycle too fast

Thu Jun 19 07:29:32 PDT 2014

If I could chime in as a Non-developer. I might be more of a 
non-standard user (given with all the things I'm trying to do with 
QGIS). I tried to keep up with all the thoughts in this email chain - 
The joys of sleeping in the GMT-5 timeszone (or is it +)...anyway......

I look at QGIS has having four operating systems it supports: Linux 
(debian and ubuntu because I am familiar with those), mac, windows, android:

  * The linux releases only seem to get release once with no bug fixes.
    Really that depends on the distro though...but for Ubuntu I think
    that is correct.
  * The windows release (using osgeo) is absolutely great - it seems to
    be getting bugfixes all the time.
  * I've only installed QGIS on a MAC twice - but from what I can tell
    it might be getting bugfixes between releases
  * Android - I have no clue.

Of course I have no clue how long it takes to release - I compiled QGIS 
once and that was an all day thing for me (adding libraries and things). 
I'm not a developer although I have dreams.

A 5 to 6 month release cycle would be fine for a user (at least for me) 
if there were bugfixes in between. In 2.0 there was a problem with 
spatialite - there was no fix until the next release. It seems (if 
memory serves me ) there was a fix that rolled out on the OSGEO side in 
windows at some point. I went against what I normally do and have been 
running 2.3 for production and it's great (at least from my standpoint). 
I've tried to respond in with reports and what not.

Really I say all of that and I think we (users) are good with whatever 
as long as you guys are happy with it. It seems like this email stirred 
up some uneasiness among your guys for release. Any user (in his right 
mind) isn't sitting there with everything waiting on 2.4 coming out in 
48 hours. You guys are the experts - make yourselves happy. Happy 
developers = better QGIS release.

If I could only add one thing - solidify the releases. Make each one 
mimic the other. Make Linux the same as windows the same as Mac. That's 
the joy of QGIS - it runs everywhere. Right now I thing the osgeo 
windows version (because mostly of sid and ecw support) is the best 
version released. I run xubuntu 14.04 on my main workstation and I think 
QGIS solid - but QGIS on windows seems to edge that one out just a bit. 
Maybe it's because most of the world runs on windows and mac and there's 
a few of use linux users out and about.

Anyway - my 2 cents worth.

Thank you for the work you are doing.

Randy

-----------------
Randal Hale
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
http://www.northrivergeographic.com
423.653.3611 <tel:423.653.3611> rjhale at northrivergeographic.com 
<mailto:rjhale at northrivergeographic.com>
twitter:rjhale
http://about.me/rjhale

On 06/19/2014 08:33 AM, Denis Rouzaud wrote:
> I think that LTS is kind of a really good idea.
>
> At some extent, it's what Sourcepole is doing with its QGIS enterprise.
> If we have enough companies paying for such bugfixes & QA, that would 
> be easily feasible, but someone should be in charge of handling this.
>
> Then, the cycle is another discussion. It could be either 2 or 3 
> releases a year, with 1 over 2 or 3 being LTS.
>
> But I would definitely investigate the idea of the LTS.
>
> Greetings,
> Denis
>
>
> On 19.06.2014 12:44, Matthias Kuhn wrote:
>> Good to hear that there are organizations putting money into QA. Thanks
>> a lot.
>>
>> I think there are different categories of users, experimental early
>> adopters and organizations going for stability at the expense of
>> waiting longer for new features.
>>
>> To get the best for both, LTS releases may be a good option. One LTS
>> branch every 8 or 12 months which gets fixes backported and 1 or 2
>> other releases in between which work the way we currently have it.
>>
>> Advantages are
>> New features get tested in the in-between releases (they will get used
>> because they are not called experimental or testing or rc).
>> Big organizations use the same LTS release (in comparison to the
>> general advice of "take every second release" which will bring one org
>> to use the Jun release and the other one the Feb release) and can
>> collaborate with bugfixing
>> Backports of bugfixes have always to be done for one specific/defined
>> version. (In comparison: if a company skips release 2.6 they are still
>> with 2.4 in the 2.7 period, and nobody will backport to 2.4 at that
>> stage)
>>
>> Best,
>> Matthias
>>
>> On Don 19 Jun 2014 12:33:01 CEST, Paolo Cavallini wrote:
>>> Il 19/06/2014 12:19, Andreas Neumann ha scritto:
>>>
>>>> I'd like to add to the discussion that there will be more 
>>>> organizations
>>>> investing in bug-fixing in the future. Yesterday, a Swiss canton 
>>>> told me
>>>> that they will invest 5000 CHF each year in QA/bugfixing in the 
>>>> future.
>>>> I am pretty sure that more organizations will follow.
>>> Wonderful, this is the way to go IMHO.
>>>
>>>> But it is important that we will provide bug-fix releases and that 
>>>> there
>>>> is a reasonable time available for testing. The short releases do not
>>>> help at all for organizations - because each new release introduces 
>>>> more
>>>> and different bugs.
>>> The above mentioned resources could be used for maintaining a stable 
>>> branch, and
>>> backporting.
>>>
>>>> We users need bug-free software more than a predictable release 
>>>> date. We
>>>> don't need QGIS at an exact specific time. But we cannot accept that
>>>> some features are broken that are key to our work.
>>> Agreed fully: that's what Blocker category is for.
>>> All the best, and thanks for this important discussion.
>>>
>>
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