[boost] Release plans [was: Maintenance release?]

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-05-03 09:34:40

At 06:28 PM 4/30/2002, David Abrahams wrote:
 >Hi All,
 >
 >Boost 1.27 contained bugs of various sorts which are causing me to have
 >to answer lots of "why won't this build?!?" questions. In particular,
 >the threads lib had a problem with extern "C" linkage which is causing a
 >failure for lots of people. The Python lib also had problems on a few
 >compilers. Naturally, users blame the build system. At the same time,
 >the reliability of Boost.Build has been considerably improved, and it
 >now gives helpful hints for building the python library (which also
 >helps those who want to build the rest of boost and don't care about
 >Python).
 >
 >Aside from those problems which are costing time and energy, we have a
 >new mailing list archive, newsgroups have been activated, and other
 >improvements have been made. The website has not been updated to reflect
 >this, though some of the CVS html has been. Not having up-to-date
 >information available to the public causes an additional drain on our
 >resources. I would like to make a maintenance release quickly, before we
 >move to a more... contemplative... release process.

I think we should go ahead with a release of whatever is ready.  Since 
there is at least one new library, the release would be 1.28.0

I agree we need a release real soon now.  So I'd like to suggest not 
merging in "unit_test_development" for this release, because it is bound to 
cause weeks of delay getting regression tests running again on all 
platforms.

But as we discussed in Curacao, shock therapy may be needed for 
"unit_test_development", so after this upcoming release we should do the 
merge right way to start people focusing on finding and fixing the 
problems.

So here is the schedule I suggest:

  Now until Release               - Run "old" Win32 regression test daily
  Now until Wednesday, May 8th    - Finish any pending changes
  Wednesday, May 8th              - Branch for release
  Thursday, May 9 - Tuesday, 14th - Fix regression failures
  Wednesday, May 15               - Target release date
  Thursday, May 16                - Merge "unit_test_development"
  Thursday, May 16 on             - Get the "new" regression tests 
working

Is this schedule a problem for anyone?

--Beman