Meeting about a release candidate (packagers, developers)

[Philip Van Hoof <spam pvanhoof be>]

Hey Sergio, Dirk-Jan and Murray,

(and everybody interested in this on the Tinymail mailing list)

Would it be plausible to have a meeting about a release candidate? And
if so, when?

I'm planning to do a release candidate of Tinymail either this week or
the week after this week. I think it would be interesting to synchronise
the repository of Modest with this release candidate too. 

On features:

Somebody (Mark Doffman) is at this moment working on fine tuning the
Python bindings. I'm planning to include this work in the first final
release of Tinymail. I'm not planning to try to include this in a first
release candidate (unless finished in time).

I'm planning to (without a formal promise) freeze the Tinymail API
starting with the release of a first release candidate.

A formal promise on the API and ABI's state will be done with a first
final release (no formal promises during RCs).

I'm planning to include an updated API documentation (the gtk-doc docs),
libtinymail, libtinymailui, libtinymail-camel, libtinymail-maemo,
libtinymail-olpc, libtinymail-gpe, libtinymail-gnome-desktop,
libtinymailui-mozembed, libtinymail-gnomevfs, libtinymailui-gtk,
libtinymail-asyncworker, libtinymail-queues and
libtinymailui-gnome-keyring in this first release candidate.

The bindings/python, tests and libtinymail-tests will be included in the
final first version. Possibly also libtinymailui-webkit.


Packages:

For a final version, I'm planning to provide Debian packages for
Ubuntu/Debian and Maemo. Perhaps would it be a good idea to have some
consistency with what Modest's distribution will ship for at least
Ubuntu Mobile and Maemo (so that no packages will conflict in future)?
Assistance with this would be helpful indeed.

I would like to use the release candidates to get this fine tuned and
agreed upon by those parties who would like to provide packaging for
Tinymail and Tinymail related projects, products and applications.

>From my head I think for example Koen Kooi (OpenEmbedded), Tollef Fog
Heen (Ubuntu Mobile), Vivek & Dirk-Jan Binnema (Modest), �stein Gisn�& Thomas Viehmann (Debian) are interested in cooperating on packaging
efforts. I can also imagine that people from Opened-Hand might be
interested in seeing Tinymail in their Poky distribution/system?

I conclude that to avoid a disaster in packaging and conflicting that at
some point several guidelines and/or arrangement should probably have to
be made? As a developer myself I have a less clear view on the type of
problems that packagers will endure. Assistance with this is welcome.


For me, personally, there's no urgency to go ahead with the release
candidates. However. I also want to get the final release .. right. But
to get a final release right I guess we'll have to have a few "test
releases": release candidates. That's my point of view on why I'd like
to start making these RCs. They will also help with getting the API to
start being frozen: the more RCs to more formal the API freeze promises
will become.

I'd like to repeat the releasing of a release candidate every two or
three weeks until the final first release takes place.


ps. Please forward this E-mail to packagers who are, might or will be
interested in packaging Tinymail (in future).

-- 
Philip Van Hoof, software developer
home: me at pvanhoof dot be 
gnome: pvanhoof at gnome dot org 
http://www.pvanhoof.be/blog