[draft] Release plans for 1.9.0?

[Chris Shoemaker]

On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 07:58:06PM -0500, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Quoting Chris Shoemaker <c.shoemaker at cox.net>:
> 
> >Last time I checked, 'make distcheck' still fails, but 'make check'
> >passes.  I have some vague impression that this might cause packaging
> >difficulties.
> 
> I'll play around with this when I can...  Usually it's "make check" that
> causes "make distcheck" to fail.  If "make check" works then usually
> distcheck fails because of missing EXTRA_DIST files.  I'll take a look.
> 
> >One thing I'd like to include in 1.9.0 is a gnucash-debug script that
> >runs gnucash under gdb.
> 
> Speaking of which, I think you removed the gnucash-run-script from
> src/bin/overrides but not src/bin -- what's up with that?

It's not in svn.

> >I think we should totally change the way we produce the NEWS entries.
> >We should be reporting on significant user-visible changes in the NEWS
> >file.  I think that we should be making those entries at the _same_
> >time as the changes themselves.  We can have an accumulator of entries
> >at the top of the file and then just date and version it at
> >release-time and start an empty accumulator.
> >
> >It's tempting to procrastinate but I think it's best to maintain NEWS
> >as-we-go.  I'll try to commit some entries.
> 
> I think this "main NEWS as-we-go" makes sence for patchlevel releases
> (e.g. 1.9.0->1.9.1, 1.9.1->1.9.2, etc).   I don't think it makes sense
> for major releases (1.8->2.0).  There's just WAY WAY WAY too much to
> keep track of as you go for a major release.

I'm not sure what you mean.  Maintaining as we go means no huge chunk
of work at any release.  Or are you saying we should do that from now
on, but not for 1.9.0, since there's so much that changed?  I'm not
suggesting that we should record more than normal, just that we record
it at the same time as the change instead of at release-time.

-chris