Re: Nine Months in Six Months

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Fri, 2006-09-08 at 11:18 +0100, Gustavo J. A. M. Carneiro wrote:
> On Sex, 2006-09-08 at 01:00 -0500, Shaun McCance wrote:
> > On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 19:32 +0100, Don Scorgie wrote: 
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 11:24 -0700, David Trowbridge wrote:
> > > > What in particular isn't possible with the 6-month cycle?
> > > 
> > > For one thing: the documentation gets squeezed.  We (the doc team) have,
> > > basically, 3 month to document all the changes, update all the docs and
> > > add any new documentation needed.  The doc team is currently running at
> > > skeleton staff and is working right up until the tarball submission
> > > deadline.  This knocks on and means that the doc translations (if
> > > present) are invariably a release behind.
> > > 
> > > Don
> > > /me now waits to see if shaunm will release his top-secret plan for
> > > world domination...
> > 
> > Here is my much-anticipated MASTER PLAN:
> 
>   Your master plan implies branching early and heavily committing to
> both branches for a long time.  Reality check: we are still using this
> archaic software called C.V.S.! Branching with that software is
> incredibly complex.
> 
>   Your master plan is blocked by bug #99999999: "migration to
> subversion".

I don't really think the concurrency issues will be problematic.
Look at it this way: My schedule gives developers four months or
so before feature freeze.  This is roughly what they have now.
It then gives them two months before we really lock things down.
That's six months, a period of time developers are used to.

Currently, this is where developers would release a premature .0
tarball, and move on with the next cycle.  They might do bug fixes
on the stable branch.  Meanwhile, writers and translators continue
to do stuff to the stable branch, because hey, what the hell else
are we going to do?

If maintainers are following the rules, they'll release a .1 and
a .2 release sometime later.  They will do this even if there were
no code changes, because writers and translators have done work.

The big thing I'm changing is what we call that tarball that we
release after six months.  Right now we call it 2.18.0.  I propose
we call it 2.17.6.  Then we take the release we'd currently call
2.18.2 and call it 2.18.0 instead.

The main point is this: there are multiple efforts that go into
creating our software.  Many of these efforts work independently
of each other.  Most of the non-programmer efforts have to occur
after we've let the programmers have their fun time.  So let's
make our schedule reflect that natural state of things.

--
Shaun