Re: [Gimp-developer] gimp 2.8.1 when?

[Christopher Curtis <ccurtis0 gmail com>]

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Liam R E Quin <liam w3 org> wrote:

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 13:25 -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:

> But what's involved? GIMP releases are source-only,

I take it that you don't use the manual... and that you use GIMP in only
one language, and, further, that the language you use is US
English... :-)

It is true that I don't follow the i18n/l10n aspects of the project. Without giving it too much thought, I would assert that point releases _should_not_ require manual changes. Updated translations, etc, seem like they can be released independently, almost as a different project.

String changes within the program may be required, true. It's unfortunate that these aren't easier to maintain. Again, I don't know what's involved, but it seems like it'd be slick if string changes were automatically emailed to people watching certain languages and they could just email back the corrections (or edit some wiki page, or...?).

But that aside, I might suggest that incomplete translations already exist and so a x.y.1 point release that breaks translations could be fixed in the regularly-paced x.y.2 point release.
 

There's also testing... including changes to dependencies in configure
scripts, for example.

Not sure what this entails ... wouldn't the autobuilder find dependency problems? Hopefully when bugs are marked 'fixed' the code checked in has been tested. And the -RCs would be for wider, non-automated testing.

Perhaps the autobuilder should spit out a .deb/.rpm to make testing -RCs even easier ... or even a new cross-compiled .exe for some .msi/wix spec.
 

Encouragement is one thing... and of course a good thing... but being a
proactive release manager is another.

Sure. If your tools can get you 90% of the way there, that's better. And if you release regularly, that alone makes it easier (and often gets your tools even closer to 100% automation).

And I'd also suggest that you allow yourself to be a bit sloppy. With regular releases a little slop is less painful, and distros can backport whatever fixes they think are critical for their releases...

So, if that makes sense, what's missing?

Chris