Re: [boost] [1.36.0] Suggestions for 1.36.0

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-03-29 21:05:03

Andrey Tcherepanov wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:46:26 -0600, Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> wrote:
> 
>> We are aiming for a quarterly release. 1.35.0 took five months, but our
>> infrastructure and procedures are improving, so I hope the next one can
>> be done in three months.
> 
> I hope too, but it is very hard to enforce 3 (or any other as it matters)  
> months period. I think it is might be worth a try to have something like  
> "another library - another dot release" policy in addition to 3 month  
> bugfix releases cycle.

It is far too expensive in terms of the release management team's time 
to put out point releases in addition to quarterly releases. And we 
still have a way to go to get to reliable quarterly releases.

> This will help to avoid situation when library got  
> accepted long time ago, but it is not available in release yet just  
> because there is no release. This will also allow new libraries authors to  
> finish the work not too long after review and acceptance - we saw cases  
> when library author has 2-3 months period that he/she can dedicate, but it  
> become an isssue half a year later.

I really think that problem will evaporate if we can get on a regular 
quarterly release cycle.

> 
>> We probably need to be a bit more specific about schedules. For example,
>> a twelve week schedule might look something like this:
>>
>> * New libraries, major revisions of old libraries, and big
>> infrastructure changes need to be merged in the first three weeks.
> 
> Does it mean that review schedulle has to be adjusted too?

No, it is much better if that schedule runs asynchronously. If the 
schedules are synchronized, and one stalls, then that forces the other 
to stall.

> 
>> * Minor fixes can be merged up until three weeks before the release
>> target date.
> 
> Then we better have a definition what is minor and what is major fix. I  
> can imagine that major is something tha affects multiple libraries and/or  
> regression tests. But for minor - is it

Yes.

> 
>> * Release candidate generation and review will begin three weeks before
>> the release target date.

Thanks for your comments,

--Beman