[boost] Re: When will 1.31 be released?

From: Christopher Currie (christopher_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-01-09 18:21:24

Joel de Guzman wrote:
> I think we should start to discuss the possibility of having individual
> releases (as Spirit is doing right now) instead of one monolithic release.

Apparently a lot of people have strong feelings one way or another on 
this one. From my perspective, it seems a lot of time is spent by the 
release managers hounding library developers to get their last minute 
fixes in at release time.

It's of course too late for 1.31, but how about a comprimise? This is 
going to be hard to describe, but bear with me:

* When a library's owners deem that they their library has a enough new 
features to justify a new release, they assign an appropriate version 
number, tag/branch CVS, and bundle up a tarball that can be unpacked on 
top of the most recently released Boost tarball.

* Boost release managers set a cutoff date: any libraries who want 
updated code in a new combined Boost release *must* perform their own 
release prior to the cutoff date, say 1 month before release.

* Branch for release, do final platform testing, working with library 
owners to get bugfixes in.

* Tag and release, with a statement like "This release of Boost 
incorporates Boost.Filesystem x.y, Boost.Thread v.w, etc..."

* Repeat every 3, 4, 6, or 12 months.

If properly managed, it could be a best of both worlds. Booot release 
managers no longer question if a library is ready for a new release, 
because it's already happened. Libraries have a way of getting new 
features out without waiting a big release, and of ensuring that a 
release won't pick up code that's not ready for primetime.

It's not perfect; and sometimes maybe no one has released a library 
since the last combined release, so we'd skip a cycle. But at least 
incremental releases could get out new features without having to wait 
for other libraries.

Thoughts welcome,
Christopher