Re: [Banshee-List] Release management, and stepping it up to 3

["Andres G. Aragoneses" <knocte gmail com>]

On 24/03/13 15:25, Bertrand Lorentz wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> As you probably have noticed, we didn't have a release schedule for
> the last 6 months and we didn't have any release since 2.6.0, back in
> October. I'm to blame for that, and I'm sorry I haven't communicated
> earlier about this.
>
> Normally, now would be the time to put out a 2.8. But I don't think
> there's enough enhancements in git master to justify a major release.
> One of the reasons is that we have several big transitions ahead of us
> (GTK# 3, GStreamer 1.0), and we've been laying the ground work for
> those.
>
> With this in mind, I'm proposing the following:
> 1/ Review all the fixes currently in git master, merge them in the
> stable-2.6 branch as appropriate [1], and do a Banshee 2.6.1 bug-fix
> release.
> 2/ Skip version 2.8.
> 3/ Banshee 3.0 will use GTK# 3 (thus depending on GTK+ 3.x and friends).
> 4/ Banshee 3.0 should use GStreamer 1.0, through our GStreamerSharp
> backend. If not, this will be the objective for 3.2.
> 5/ Banshee 3.0 will be released "when it's ready", and should reach
> for the same level of quality and stability than our previous stable
> releases. It will of course be preceded by several development
> releases and release candidates.
>
> This means that we will abandon our time-based release schedule, at
> least until the 3.0 stable release is out.
>
> One of the reasons why the gtk3 branch hasn't been merged into git
> master is that I was never sure we could get to a good-enough quality
> before the next scheduled release. Not setting an arbitrary date for
> Banshee 3.0 will allow us to work more serenely towards a high quality
> release.
>
> More than ever, we will need everybody's help to reach those goals:
> coding, reviewing, building, testing, documenting, on Linux, OS X and
> Windows.
>
> So, what do you think ?

Sounds good, I was actually thinking something similar lately.

Before merging gtk3 into master, we could also create a "gtk2" branch 
(and label it as 2.8 but without releasing it?), just in case we want to 
have a reference to the last working gtk2/gconf-compatible infrastructure?

BTW, regarding 2.6.1, I would like to get on it a fix for a crasher that 
happens when using Ubuntu 13.04 beta. The proper fix should maybe really 
be in gtk-sharp, but the workaround in Banshee is trivial and I guess 
it's much easier to convince the Ubuntu community to include an updated 
stable banshee than to rush a gtk-sharp 2.12.x release (which may 
contain very little) in 13.04 final. So by saying this I'm suggesting to 
not release too late and not release too early either (wait for this 
fix!), I'll share more details at the end of the week.

Thanks