Re: Proposed release process/plans

[Malcolm Tredinnick <malcolm commsecure com au>]

On Sat, Jun 08, 2002 at 08:29:03PM -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
> Some people from the board and release team sat down to come up with a
> proposal for what branches we will have after 2.0 is out, and what the
> goals of those branches will be. This turned out to involve thinking
> through the big picture of GNOME development for the next 18 months or
> so.
> 
> Appended is the current proposal, pretty boring stuff but important
> for everyone to be on the same page about. Nat has a more fun writeup
> of it (involving DHTML!) that needs resyncing with the current
> proposal, then it will probably hit dotplan.

To me, this all looks pretty sane and matches the model I would like to
see. Only one point seems left open ...

[...]
> The UI/string/feature freezes are intended to be a gradual gradient
> instead of sharp lines, gradient is defined by the release team.

I assume this means, that up to some point, all string changes are
reasonable (although for 2.0.x, the release team may need to stomp on
somebody who goes completely mad changing strings) and beyond some date,
reasonable changes need approval and beyond some other date, only
spelling errors or whatever can be fixed.

> Application to 2.0.0
> ====================================================================
> 
> There are two options for how the Polish phase works post-2.0.0
> release:
> 
>   - 2.0.1 in one month, 2.0.2 in two months, then enter Locked
>   - 2.0.1 in 1.5 months (6 weeks), then enter Locked

This seems to be the open issue. What were the pros and cons discussed
in the off-list mail that generated this proposal?

As I see it, the first option runs the risk of not giving anybody a
breather after the huge push to get 2.0.0 in the last few months and we
are instantly under the hammer for 2.0.1 and then 2.0.2. On the other
hand, this means that some of the more annoying bugs that don't make the
blocker list for 2.0.0 will be fixed before too many people get really
annoyed.

The second option means that we can have a couple of weeks of slightly
less hectic work and maybe can fix the bugs "properly", but I suspect
some of the bugs that are currently marked "not serious" are sleepers
that, as others have pointed out, will only become significant when Joe
and Jane Public start using GNOME 2.

My feeling is that option two is better, but I haven't been killing
myself working on GNOME in the last few months, unlike a lot of other
people; so maybe they should offer opinions as well.

Malcolm

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