Re: [ros-dev] Discussion: Release policy changes

[Ged Murphy]

On 12/9/06, Aleksey Bragin <aleksey(a)studiocerebral.com> wrote:
>  
>                  Hello,
>  I'd like to hear opinions regarding the change in release policy.
>
>  The proposition:
>  Release happens on a strict time basis, like once per month. That
>  means, at the end of the month we look for the best revision inside
>  this month (probably which is closer to the end of the month), branch
>  from it, apply all fixes (if any), and release.
>
>  Disadvantage: a few coming releases' quality will be overall lower,
>  there might be things like 0.3.25 (if release frequency is set too
>  high, and this is not a disadvantage actually).
>
>  Advantages: in the long run quality goes up, more developers due to
>  higher release rate, more publicity, people will finally realize it's
>  an alpha product, more bugs reported, no signs of a dead project (I
>  doubt there are healthy projects doing 1 release per year :)).
>
>  Any thoughts are appreciated. 


I think everyone knows my view on this, I agree 100% with this change.

We are in Alpha, we don't need to polish every release:
1. it's killing our release cycle
2. it's taking the fun out of releasing
3. we get very little publicity

I think this could be the turning point we need.
A release is made no matter what, no arguments. The only think that stops it
is if there has been a huge regression which hasn't been fixed since the
last release (e.g. no networking)

I'm a happier person for seeing this email today :)

Ged "Release early, release often" Murphy.