getting started on 2.8

[Mark McLoughlin <mark skynet ie>]

Hey,
	A few modules have branched for 2.8 already but I thought I'd remind
everyone how things happen and make a few suggestions:

  + As soon as you want to start hacking on new stuff for 2.8, you 
    should create a "gnome-2-6" branch on which 2.6.x development can 
    continue to happen. To branch you can do:

      $> cvs tag GNOME_2_6_BRANCHPOINT
      $> cvs tag -b gnome-2-6

    and to check out a copy of that branch you can do:

      $> cvs co -d mymodule-2-6 -r gnome-2-6 mymodule

    Once you've branched, please send a mail out to gnome-i18n gnome org
    and desktop-devel-list gnome org notifying everyone. Also, you 
    should change the version number on HEAD to e.g. 2.7.1

     More details here:

	http://developer.gnome.org/gep/gep-4.html

  + When you commit fixes to HEAD, please consider whether they are 
    relevant to the gnome-2-6 branch and if so commit to the branch. The
    release team will be publishing a schedule for the 2.6.x releases 
    soon.

  + When you send out your mail saying that the module has branched, it 
    would be really helpful if you could take a few minutes to summarise
    what the plans for that module are for 2.8. No matter how vague or 
    rough those plans are, they will still be very useful in letting 
    people know what to expect and what they can help out with.

  + One minor versioning change I'd suggest we follow from here on is 
    that we should bump the version number of a module *after* a release
    rather than before. A minority of modules do it this way now, but it
    would be helpful if we all did it this way ... especially the 
    libraries.

    Consider the case where a new API gets added to gtk+ CVS HEAD and 
    the panel immediately uses it. Because the gtk+ version number gets 
    bumped just before a release, there is no way for the panel to 
    require the unreleased version. Instead we quite often find 
    ourselves releasing tarballs which depend on unreleased versions of 
    libraries and the tarball only fails to build at link time.

Cheers,
Mark.