[OPEN-ILS-DEV] [OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] 2.8 release scheduling

[Bill Erickson]

On Thu, Dec 18, 2014 at 8:29 AM, Mike Rylander <mrylander at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bill,
>
> First, thanks for putting out a timeline.
>
> I am a little concerned about the pre-beta feature freeze.  In the past,
> the merge deadline for features has always been "whatever makes it into the
> beta release", and I don't see cutting that back by a week helping things
> to get done faster -- we just end up with a week less features in 2.8, and
> that last week is often (us being humans, and whatnot) the critical push
> time for things that are almost there.  Do you have something in mind that
> I'm not seeing for the change there?
>

The feature freeze basically is the beta.  (I recall now this was called
the "beta cut-off" during the 2.6 cycle.  I'll use this terminology going
forward).  The interval between the cut-off and beta release cutting is our
chance to let the dust settle after the merge rush so we're not cutting a
buggy beta.  If Feb 18th is too soon, we can certainly push the beta back.

With my proposed schedule, the post-freeze period for 2.8 is already 2
weeks shorter than it was for 2.7.  So, if we push the beta back, we should
push back the mid-march release date as well.


>
> I did note that the feature target deadline is not a hard deadline, but
> for my part I can say that with the schedule only being clarified over what
> amounts to 3 months (the remainder of December through release in
> mid-March), the middle of January will be a tight squeeze to target things
> by then.  Being one that does a good bit of feature development, I expect
> to be begging leave to target features after the scheduled date on several
> smaller features, as dev time permits in January and February.  I just want
> to set that expectation now, so it's not a surprise if it ends up
> happening...
>

I am definitely expecting new features to emerge after the LP target
deadline.  This deadline serves two purposes in my mind.  1. If you know
about it, document it, so others will know about it.  2. If you want to
introduce large architectural changes after this date, be prepared for
additional community scrutiny.

I was in no particular rush to publish the schedule with the assumption
that release schedules are highly predictable.  Release mid-March/October,
beta cut-off a month before that, and everything else is gravy.  For my own
sake and that of future RM's, is that not a reasonable assumption?

Thanks,

-b



>
> Thanks!
>
>
> --
> Mike Rylander
>  | President
>  | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
>  | phone:  1-877-OPEN-ILS (673-6457)
>  | email:  miker at esilibrary.com
>  | web:  http://www.esilibrary.com
>
>
> On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 4:07 PM, Bill Erickson <berickxx at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I'm attempting to sketch out the release schedule for Evergreen 2.8, so
>> I'd like to run some dates/thoughts by everyone.
>>
>> For starters, unless someone requests it, I'm not planning to cut an
>> Alpha release.  I've never seen anyone install one :).  I'm happy to cut
>> one if desired, though.
>>
>> Proposed schedule:
>>
>> * Jan 14 2015: Feature Target Deadline
>>
>> This is the date where all features we expect to get into 2.8 are
>> documented in LP and targeted to 2.8.  They do not have to be coded or
>> tagged as pull requests by this date.  They just need to be documented.  As
>> before, this is a strong recommendation, but not a hard deadline.
>>
>> Feb 18 2015: Feature Freeze
>>
>> From this date forward, only bug fixes may be committed to master.  Any
>> un-merged features will be booted to 2.9.
>>
>> Feb 25 2015: 2.8.beta1 Release
>>
>> March 9 2015: 2.8.rc1 Release
>>
>> March 18 2015: 2.8.0 Release
>>
>> Comments/suggestions welcome.
>>
>> Note that in the future I'll avoid cross-posting to both -general and
>> -dev lists and just send 2.8 updates to -general to cut down on noise.
>>
>> Thanks, everyone.
>>
>> -b
>>
>
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