[Qgis-developer] Release schedule discussion - again

[Paolo Cavallini]

Hi all,

Il 13/10/2015 01:14, Tom Chadwin ha scritto:
> If the devs need more end users to test, then changing to a release every
> six months, LTR every two years, would help. However, how would the devs
> feel about patching LTRs for twice the duration they do now, and for one
> extra non-LTR in between each? To me it sounds like significantly more work
> to keep backporting for two years instead of one. 

the current LTR has been an experiment, and IMHO it has been a success.
Do we really want to change schedule every 6 months?
We know for sure there are contrasting needs, and we'll never make
everyone happy. Some times ago, we had people complaining not being able
to use for many months the supercool feature they have developed or paid
for.
I think it's mostly a matter of communicating appropriately:
* for maximum reliability, use the LTR
* if you need latest features, go for the latest published.
Maybe we should state this clearly on the download page.
On the other hand, I am with Nyall on the Qt5 (and I should add Python
3) issue.

More below.

Il 12/10/2015 23:17, Larry Shaffer ha scritto:

> At Boundless we are seeing both sides of the issue: users who want only
> the LTR and users who deploy the LTR but always work with or test the
> latest version between deployments of the LTR. The latter group is
> finding the current pace quite difficult to keep up with. I'm talking
> about very large government agencies rolling out to 100s upon 100s of
> thousands of users. They rely upon the advice of their power users who
> are working with whatever is the current version (not just the LTR).

This touches a *very* imprtant point: large organisations should have
very clear that if they need a more stable release cycle, the best and
most clever thing they should do is to fund:
* more automated tests
* more backfixing
* more and earlier backporting.
I cannot believe someone using any software in such huge numbers not
having a few hundreds thousands bucks to properly support these needs.

All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html
All the best.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - www.faunalia.eu
QGIS & PostGIS courses: http://www.faunalia.eu/training.html