[Zope3-dev] RFC: Release cycles

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Jim Fulton wrote:
>> I suggest to adopt a release management similar to Debian's (except 
>> that they take ages for new releases which we don't want). A short 
>> period of time after a certain version is released (e.g. X3.0), the 
>> next version (e.g. X3.1) should be branched off from the trunk. At 
>> that time the branch is under a feature freeze like the X3.0 branch 
>> was when it was branched off. The trunk will be open for new features 
>> as usual.
> 
> Could you describe the benefit you think this provides?

In short: Short release cycles.

The benefit is that when a 3.x.0 final has been released, focus is 
immediately set on 3.x+1, making sure that the changes that were 
introduced to the trunk during 3.x feature freeze are being released 
asap. Of course, if there were no changes to the trunk, no need to 
branch and no need to release anything.

>> I'm also not proposing to set a specific time period that a release 
>> cycle should take. Quality code takes time and that's ok.
> 
> More importantly, it takes volunteers.

Sure. But Goldegg has shown that people are actually willing to 
volunteer in the future, let alone the volunteers we have now. Overall 
we should expect more contributions for Zope 3 because an increasing 
number of people are going to build apps on it and realize that this or 
that needs to improved. This has happened with Steve, Alan/Sidnei, and 
Roger already.

>> Disadvantages
>>
>>  - more overhead for the developers (though I think this is marginal 
>> if at all
>>    existant; I expect not more than two branches [trunk and 
>> to-be-released
>>    branch] to be active at a time, so it'd be just like now.)
> 
> It is hardly marginal.  It is a significant expense.

Having two branches is an expense. But we usually have two branches 
anyway. The additional expense is to pay attention when to branch, 
declare that branch feature-frozen etc. That is the work of the release 
manager, so I think there's not much more expense on the other developers.

> The bottom line is that releases take a lot of effort to release and 
> manage.
> 
> As long as there are enough volunteers, we can have more releases, but 
> don't assume that there will be enough.
> 
> I know that Fred and I don't have time to work on a 3.1 any time soon.

I realize that. It doesn't make sense to build castles in the air. It 
does make sense, however, to have release plans at hand. The reason I 
was concerned and wrote this was not because I have 100 volunteers at my 
disposal, but because Stephan and your statements seemed to be more 
about features than about having time to work on it.

As for volunteers, there seems to be at least Roger who has a specific 
need for X3.1 *wink*. And Andreas has shown that people are actually 
willing (and able to) manage releases. The idea of this writing was that 
when these people come, we let them :).

Philipp