Release schedule [WAS: Proposals about gnucash-gnome2]

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 10:36:14AM -0400, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Quoting Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net>:
> 
> >I think in the past, we've been focused on what code changes are
> >required for a G2 release.  But, at least for alpha releases, can't we
> >just release regularly and see how many releases it takes to go beta
> >and then final?
> 
> That /is/ what we did for the 1.7 test releases.  We had a new release
> every two weeks, approximately.

Most good ideas are not original. :)

> 
> >It's not like we're breaking stuff on purpose.  I think that right
> >now, any cvs snapshot that builds is suitable for release as alpha.
> >How hard is the release process?  Can it be automated into a, say
> >biweekly, release?
> 
> It's unclear if it can be automated...
> 
> >We could say, o.k. let's ensure that the tree builds on the 1st and
> >3rd Monday of the month, because someone's cronjob is sucking up the
> >cvs into a tgz.  What else is involved in an alpha release?
> 
> You need to modify the NEWS, README, and configure.in files with the
> release numbers..  This can't be easily automated, I don't think.
> The release tag can certainly be automated, provided you have a
> cvs writer in the cron job...
> 
> Granted, we could probably write a script that makes the necessary
> modifications, commits the changes, tags the release, and runs
> ./autogen.sh ; make distcheck

Yeah, release number increments are easy to automate.  And I think the
typical alpha tester would be satisfied with a verbatim selection of
the ChangeLog since last release.

-chris

> 
> -derek
> -- 
>       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
>       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
>       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
>       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available
>