Timo Kreuzer wrote:
I also think t would be good to release more often and with the new regression testing in place it might be possible to do a monthly release. But please keep in mind that releasing is always time consuming and there should be a clear definition of when a release should be done and what keeps a release to not be submitted.
Some suggestions:
I think you missed the whole point of changing the release system.
Releasing shouldn't be time consuming, as Alekseys first email said "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."
Lets look at Wine's release process, every few weeks Julliard takes a snapshot of the source, builds it and makes both available online as a 0.9.* release A quick news article is normally written shortly after detailing the main changes (not every single change, this is unessesary). Granted, Wine releases are generally very stable, but Wine are in Beta, currently sitting 1 major increment from the version 1 release. We are at 0.3, currently 7 increments from a version 1 release. We are in Alpha, we don't need to worry too much about perfectly polished releases, that can be saved from the major releases (i.e. 3.0, 4.0, 5.0)
Our main interest is getting releases out as often as possible, and with as little effort as possible. Our releases are never going to be completely bug free at this stage, but I personally don't see that as a bad thing. 90% of patches we've accepted recently have been bug fixes, not new features. It seems to me that bugs are attracting devs.
It will happen on occasions that a release finds it's way out with a relatively serious bug which has been missed. This would be picked up by end users testing the releases. Again, I don't see a massive problem with this, the bug can be quickly fixed and a new release put out straight after with a little news article letting people know what is going on. This might mean that we end up with things like 0.3.57, but is this really so bad? I quite like the idea of it. This isn't a web browser or text editor, it's a full operating system. 57 minor increments sounds entirely reasonable to me.
If it makes people happier, a note could be placed on the 'Download Now' area stating that ROS is incomplete, these releases are snapshots and to expect some bugs.
Ged.