Subject: Re: Upcoming releases
From: Sam TH (sam@uchicago.edu)
Date: Mon Feb 12 2001 - 17:13:02 CST
On Mon, Feb 12, 2001 at 11:05:34AM -0800, Paul Rohr wrote:
> Dom,
>
> Thanks for taking the lead on driving the release process to closure.
>
> At 01:06 AM 2/12/01 -0500, Dom Lachowicz wrote:
> >What I'd like to do is release a CVS snapshot of AbiWord in about 2 days.
> >Call it a 0.9.0 pre-release if you will. There's no need to build any
> >binaries, but if you'd like to, please do. I'll be providing a number of
> >builds for GTK+ and Gnome on RH7, for instance. I'll be uploading all
> >recieved binaries to our Sourceforge site for distribution and making
> >notices on Gnotices, LWN, freshmeat, etc...
>
> OK, I'm a heretic. Since you're going through almost all of the usual
> release process anyhow, why not call this 0.7.13, and mention that it's
> "really" a pre-release of 0.9.0 in the announcements?
Well, I see two reasons (which are related):
1) The release process for 0.7.12 took a *really* long time. We don't
want to spend all our time on this prerelease.
2) We don't really want to try to get builds for all the supported
platforms, for the same reason. Builds on FreeBSD/i386, linux/i386,
linux/ppc, beos/i386, and win32/i386 (and probably qnx/i386) are all
really easy to get done, and make up 90% of our audience. But I
wouldn't want to try to make a "real" release w/o including everyone.
>
> >As for the future (0.9.0 and beyond), what's happening? Well, we need a
> >styles dialog and the new lists dialog before 0.9.0 is out. Work is underway
> >on both. I'm also working on a few very small dialogs that I'd like to add
> >too, but they'll be in RSN (tomorrow?).
>
> Yet another reason to not call this week's release 0.9.0-pre*. That's too
> much work to get done in a few days, and "pre" releases should get quickly
> followed by the "real" thing.
>
> >The early stages of 0.9.x will represent a soft feature-freeze. We can
> >change around the look and feel of toolbars, dialogs, menus, etc... and even
> >add some new functionality.
>
> Excellent. Could you post a list of any dialogs which will _not_ make the
> 0.9.0 (and thus 1.0) release under your plan? That way, anyone who really
> cares about those features has had fair warning.
>
I think the only one is Borders and Shading (am I wrong here?).
> >New file filters will be generally accepted
> >during this phase as well, if people want to hack on them. I'll probably be
> >doing some work on Word export and OpenOffice filters, and maybe even KWord
> >too.
>
> Definitely. Having a soft freeze on the feature set should really simplify
> life for anyone interested in completing various file filters so they Just
> Work for that *entire* feature set:
>
> http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/01/February/0369.html
>
> This is a prime time to be recruiting people to get that work done.
>
> >Other new features will probably be added, but I'm hoping that people
> >post new feature-related patches to the list for peer-review.
>
> An interesting addition to our current process. To date, we've trusted
> anyone with commit access to make any changes they're willing to stand
> behind (and finish, if need be).
>
> This would be a very public way to maintain release discipline, and is
> probably necessary for anyone who'll need help from others to make sure a
> new feature Just Works on all platforms.
>
> >By the middle of 0.9.x there will be a hard freeze on new strings. A call to
> >translators will be made. Everyone in our CREDITS.txt under translators will
> >recieve an email from me. An announcement will also be made on gnome.org's
> >i18n mailing list to get these people to contribute too. They're damn good
> >and fast at what they do.
>
> Awesome. Do you want to do this all yourself, or would you be willing to
> accept help from someone else who'd be willing to own this task?
>
> IIRC, some of the translators have been silently coordinating and commiting
> other translations, and perhaps someone's ready to step up and start
> handling things at this level.
>
> If so, I'm sure you can find other ways to stay productive. ;-)
>
> >At some arbitrary point, the tree will be frozen and I will accept only bug
> >fixes into the tree (and possibly a new feature or two *if there is
> >overwhelming demand and it does not produce new bugs*).
>
> Cool. Sounds like you're formally claiming ownership of this release
> process, no?
>
Well, I was Release Manager last time, and had sort of planned to
continue that role (see previous remarks about peanut butter). Do you
really want to this, Dom?
I'm sure we can work something out.
sam th
sam@uchicago.edu
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/
GnuPG Key:
http://www.abisource.com/~sam/key
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