> From: gedmurphy@gmail.com
> To: ros-dev@reactos.org
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2010 08:09:57 +0100
> Subject: Re: [ros-dev] 0.3.12 milestones status
>
> victor Martinez wrote:
>
> > In the same way, and imho, I think it is much better
> > to avoid sending critical code one month before the release.
>
> This isn't how you release.
> The whole point in branching for a release is so you can stabalise the
> branch whilst trunk continues to be 'bleeding edge'
> What's the point in branching otherwise? We may as well just tag trunk and
> do away with branching.


I am not agree :) As far as i see we have tried to (more or less)stabilize trunk before branching at least in the 2 latest releases. An i.e is the 0.3.12 release, if we are following the "bleeding edge" concept then we should have branched several months ago and just pulled the regression fixes from trunk to the branch. Our approach was different: Stabilizing trunk fixing the known regressions (which,btw,were marked as Milestones) and then branching.


There is not an incompatibility with the "stabilizing trunk" and "branching" concepts. First because exists the "Hack-releases" (fixes just applied for the release) and that just can be done in a branch. Second because a (more or less) stabilized trunk doesn't mean a regression-free trunk (but it could be).


The first main advantage (about avoid sending critical code in the month we are going to release) is that we will have a whole month to check  if the critical changes has waken up underlying bugs (or if the critical changes has introduced Eisenbugs).If we are following the "bleeding edge" approach  we can just pray to find those Eisenbugs in the Release Candidate ISO tests and, since there aren't a lot of testers checking the RC ISO, it is quite unprovable.


The second main advantage is that we reduce the Release Engineers amount of work. It is not the same bugging them to create just one RC ISO than bugging them to create 2 or 3 because playing with the "bleeding edge" concept.