On 5/17/06, Don Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'd guess 90+% of other open source projects seem to do just fine doing all the testing and voting before the release.
I'm not aware of any project, open or closed source, that only issues "stable" or "GA" releases without issuing any type of beta or release-candidate first. The process is suppose to be that we release the distribution as an Alpha or Beta Release first, and then, based on feedback from the rest of the users, decide whether to promote it to GA. In this particular case, we are not distributing the 1.3.4 Beta because of the DTD issue. Otherwise, it would already be mirrored, announced, and linked on the downloads page, just like the Shale Alpha. We do *not* need a GA designation to announce and distribute a release.
I understand the concern of screwing things up from a release manager standpoint, but that tells me we need better tests, a more automatic Maven build, etc. We don't require reviews after every commits because we trust the committer. Releases should be braindead easy. If they were, and everyone had tested the code beforehand and given their thumbs up, a release should be basically automatic, something we can trust to another committer without looking over their shoulder. Ok, so if you don't think this is the answer to the backwards release then test problem, what is?
The release process isn't backward. It's the same process that Tomcat, HTTPD, MySQL, and many other teams uses. We issue a milestone and then decide if it's an Alpha or a Beta. We let the rest of the world test it, and if it gets the thumbs up, we promote it to GA, without re-rolling or re-naming the distribution. No fuss, no muss. If the codebase is stable, as it has been with Struts 1.2 lately, then we might skip straight to GA, but only because we already have other releases under our belt. Struts 1.2.x went through had both a "test build" and a Beta before we hit GA in 1.2.2. -Ted. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
