Re: [Gimp-developer] Setting Up a Release Procedure

[Simone Karin Lehmann <simone lisanet de>]

Am 28.11.2013 um 22:25 schrieb Jehan Pagès <jehan marmottard gmail com>:
Hi,

> Well actually the 4 main points are:
> 1/ testing: right now, releases are sudden, out of nowhere, and we
> discover release issues afterwards.

yes, we really need a test cycle before a release goes public. Especially if there’s not only a new GIMP 
source, but a new OS version as well, like it is on OS X. I just discovered a new bug, which is IMO release 
critical. On OS X Mavericks, the pencil and brushes outline doesn’t show, so it’s almost impossible to paint, 
clone and brush.

> 2/ Work duplication: as you noted, many people on OSX are doing the
> same thing. On Windows, well there are Drawoc and Ender which have 2
> different procedures too.

well, I’ve tried to answer this in another thread. So let’s give it a new try.

> 4/ It looks like it is complicated for each of these individual
> packager. When I see for instance Simone Karin Lehmann saying that she
> just made a release and wouldn't do it again immediately (probably
> because too boring/annoying task), that is too bad. 

It’s not about building. I wrote a couple of scripts which automates that quite well. But in the last years 
I’ve made a lot of OS X specific patches (don’t ask, why some of them are not upstream…. long story) and 
making a new release requires to adapt these patches and to test if the are still needed and if they still 
fix the addressed issue. Two examples:  years ago on X11 it took me for ages to fix the file chooser sorting 
bug. Well, on Mavericks it’s back again. Second: using the Cocoa based version of gtk-mac-integration to get 
properly working menus and keyboard shortcuts. 

Further in the past I’ve tried to test that new sources fit into the „Mac standards“ and wrote patches to do 
so. E.g. moving the config directory to it’s proper location in ~/Library/Application Support.

New OS versions introduce new bugs. See the pencil / brush issue I mentioned above.

Pushing releases in such short cycles forces me to „just run my scripts“ to get a new package out and satisfy 
all users who start asking for the new packages. I already have a lot of requests for a SnowLeopard version.  
This leaves no room for testing or fixing already known issues. And that was the only thing I wanted to say 
when I wrote that I don’t want to redo some work. Sorry for not writing that clearly enough in the first 
place. 
 
Simone Karin