12 Feb
2014
12 Feb
'14
5:43 a.m.
Dear all,
in etherpad 63 (http://trinity.etherpad.trinitydesktop.org/63) we had some discussions
about switching to a fixed-time release cycle after R14.0.0 is out of the door. The end
result of those discussions and the preliminary agreement of some developers is to use a
90-day release cycle (pending Tim's agreement too :) ).
The idea is to issue a maintenance release R14.0.x every 3 months, containing bug fixes
and minor improvements, and issue a minor release R14.y.0 every year containing bigger
improvements. This will require bugs to be backported from the trunk to the R14.0.x branch
for up to 9 months (which could become not that easy after several changes are done in the
trunk) and would provide major improvements to the users only once a year. On the other
hand, it may prove a more stable solution.
An alternative scenario I have been tinkering for a while lately is one where every 3
months we ship whatever is in the trunk as the next release. In this case we do not need
to backport any bug and users would be able to get major improvements up to 4 times each
year. On the other hand we may introduce some degree of instability if a feature is not
well tested before shipping it (but in any case that risk would exist also with the minor
R14.y.0 releases of the first scenario), with the "fixing time" being the same
(3 months in both scenarios).
Given the limited amount of development resources that we have, I have come to like the
second scenario the most, and I would like to hear the opinion of other developers as
well.
If we end up adopting the second scenario, I would also like to propose an alternative
release version numbering schema: Ryy.x, where yy is the year number and x is a
progressive release number within the yy year.
So for example this year we would have R14.0, R14.1, R14.2 (and R14.3 is R14.0 is released
before March 31). Then next year we would have R15.0, R15.1, R15.2 and R15.3 and so
on....
Coincidentally, this year is 2014, so the year number matches the R14 release number too
:)
Also, a side-effect benefit would be that TDE would look more active to the general public
with Ryy.x release numbers than R14.0.x release numbers, since the last would probably be
thought of as "nothing major, just minor fixes".
Looking forward for your opinions.
Cheers
Michele