There has been some discussion about branching 1.4. There have been some rounds of testing done against a few iterations and we're trying to wind it down so we can be prepared for release. Unofficially we've been operating under a semi-feature freeze to avoid larger disruptions to the testing. For the sake of openness though, we seriously need to formally declare a feature freeze. I feel the best way to do this is to branch 1.4, this way 1.5 feature development can continue while we root out large scale testing bugs in the 1.4 branch.
Mentors- How long is an appropriate time to wait between announcing and carrying forward with branching? Should we put it up to vote or is simply no one objecting to branching within the timeframe sufficient? Everyone- I think we've done a fairly good job labeling tickets as to whether they're 1.4 or 1.5. There are still some tickets which are marked 1.4, I think, which could/should be pushed on to 1.5 instead of holding back 1.4. In case of this, please open up discussions on the tickets so we can come to a decision on a case by case basis. There are a few items of discussion, particularly https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACCUMULO-74 and https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACCUMULO-19 which both involve packaging of Accumulo. I feel the best way to deal with these tickets in 1.4 is as follows- If the packaging for them is done before we do the final update for 1.4 (which we will determine after sufficient testing of the frozen product) and they do not interfere with standard operating procedure, I think we should include them in 1.4 as the impact of these pom changes is very small but the impact could be large. However, I don't think we should be left waiting for these changes if they are the only things left. Please discuss! John
