[Qgis-developer] Four month cycle too fast

[Jürgen E. Fischer]

Hi Randal,

On Thu, 19. Jun 2014 at 10:29:32 -0400, Randal Hale wrote:
> * 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.

Depends on the ubuntu version you have - and if there are packaging related
bugs.

For instance the trusty package was uninstallable (at least the python support)
as trusty (unreleased at the time of the qgis release) moved on and hence the
package was referring to package versions that didn't exist anymore.

To fix that there was a new build from the release branch to solve that using
the current release branch at that point.

Other Packages that didn't need to be rebuild, because they were for stable
releases weren't.

Debian itself also has 2.2 builds that get the backported fixes (and Bas also
backports some fixes we didn't backport and maybe stuff we didn't fix at all -
I believe).   But I Debian will probably stay at 2.2 and skip some upcoming
version.


> * The windows release (using osgeo) is absolutely great - it seems to be
>   getting bugfixes all the time.

The qgis 2.2 package wasn't rebuild there either (even when it/I switched from
GDAL 1.10.1 to 1.11).  If you're referring to the nightly builds, than the
ubuntu/debian argument argument above doesn't stick as we also have nightly
builds for those - that would also have the latest fixes.

> 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.

Only ~20hrs.   Friday 12:00 UTC. 


> Right now I thing the osgeo windows version (because mostly of sid and ecw
> support) is the best  version released.

2.2 (or better put GDAL 1.10.1) in OSGeo4W currently doesn't have plugins for
MrSid and ECW.   The standalone installer was made from the same binaries, but
at release time when GDAL 1.10.1 was still default and still has ECW and MrSid
out of the box.  The nightly build however uses GDAL 1.11 which has those
plugins.  And 2.4 will be built with current GDAL in OSGeo4W and therefore will
also have ECW/MrSid support.


> A 5 to 6 month release cycle would be fine for a user (at least for me) if
> there were bugfixes in between.

That's the point.  For the packaging it doesn't matter if you build a new
release or an old release with bugfixes (one or a dozen).  The effort
is essentially the same.

It just about building one state for a number of platforms.  The release or
bugfixes are already done at that point.

So a new release every four month w/o bugfix release between release is less
effort than a new release every six month with 2 bugfix releases.


Jürgen

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