Subject: Re: Upcoming releases
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Mon Feb 12 2001 - 19:30:15 CST
At 05:13 PM 2/12/01 -0600, Sam TH wrote:
>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.
This makes it sound like something about the release process is busted. If
we're doing things properly, the mechanics of cutting a clean release
shouldn't take more than a day or so. (Assuming, of course, that sufficient
notice is given so that everyone can coordinate their work.)
What kinds of problems are you encountering?
In any event, a 0.7.13 release sounds like a much better time to get any
remaining process glitches smoothed out. Or would you rather practice on
0.9.0, with all the increasing visibility that entails?
>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.
Define everyone. Not to pick on anyone's platform, but if it takes more
than a few days to get someone's platform built, then it's not being
actively maintained. If users on that platform want more timely releases,
they need to recruit a more vigorous maintainer.
Don't get me wrong -- I love shipping on a dozen or more platforms, I really
do. It's just that holding (or skipping) releases due to the lack of more
active maintainers sounds backwards.
To put it another way, it makes a ton of sense to work with Thomas to ensure
that QNX is ready -- he's actively doing a ton of work, and it's only common
courtesy to coordinate schedules with him. I wish we also had folks with
the same level of interest in BeOS/PPC, say, or Irix, but we don't.
To be blunt, simul-shipping on numerous platforms is really cool, but
holding up (or mislabeling) a release because a minority platform isn't
ready yet puts the incentives in all the wrong places.
Paul
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Feb 12 2001 - 20:42:54 CST