[Qgis-psc] Backporting?

[Juergen E. Fischer]

Hi,

On Wed, 05. Mar 2014 at 12:28:12 +0100, Jürgen E. Fischer wrote:
> But this comes up after each release, because the previous stage isn't tested
> enough and hence the release branch gets a few early fixes that also find
> their way into the packages (although there currently is no point release).

And this IMHO also applies to the potential point releases.   The backports
also would need testing.  And that's what we - the community - do too less in
master already.  Personally I don't see that as a dev task in a OS project.

IMHO the best spot to test is right before the release - that's what the 4
weeks are meant for, sort out what's found, release and live with that until
the next release.

There are already automated builds for master that can be tested and if
anything pops up a commit is all it needs to apply a fix.  No extra effort.

What happens now is that the release is broadly (maybe unvoluntarily) tested
right after it's release, simple things pop up, fixes require backports, maybe
a (delayed) point release, new packages, new announcements, apologies, noise.
Just because the testing is done a bit too late.   Not sure if we can change
that.

I don't see a good spot to apply testing there, that wouldn't require extra
builds (RCs?), extra announcements, waiting for reports and stuff and then put
out the real (point) release.

But that should be done as there is a fair chance that bugs are introduced by
this (we've been there).  And those hit the users totally unexpected as that's
not what we im- or explictly advertise - and it doesn't look good for us.

Packaging is not the actual issue - that can be automated (given that we can
agree on a save set of assumptions on how we release).


Jürgen

-- 
Jürgen E. Fischer         norBIT GmbH               Tel. +49-4931-918175-31
Dipl.-Inf. (FH)           Rheinstraße 13            Fax. +49-4931-918175-50
Software Engineer         D-26506 Norden               http://www.norbit.de
QGIS PSC member (RM)      Germany                      IRC: jef on FreeNode                         

-- 
norBIT Gesellschaft fuer Unternehmensberatung und Informationssysteme mbH
Rheinstrasse 13, 26506 Norden
GF: Jelto Buurman, HR: Amtsgericht Emden, HRB 5502