Rick Hillegas wrote:
I hope to rely heavily on the community's advice here. I'm a bit
unclear on the distinction between a beta and a release. Is it
basically a matter of whether the beta bit is turned on, preventing
the candidate from building upgradable databases? Or does does the
distinction mean more for Apache and/or Derby?
I am not sure about special meaning for Apache/Derby. Here is a bit
of info from the HTTP server project:
http://httpd.apache.org/dev/release.html where they require a vote for
transition from alpha to beta and then again to GA.
To me, a beta starts from the time you flip that beta bit and is an
indication to users that the feature additions are pretty much set and
it is time to pound like crazy until the new features are really tested
we feel highly confident there are no significant regressions. For us,
according to current schedule[1] I think that the beta period means
August 10 - Sept 14 and overlaps with our vote on release candidates. I
personally think it would be ideal to have these events be sequential
but I think announcing the period it as a formal beta will encourage
users to try 10.2. I also think there needs an incredible amout of
user activity on the beta to achieve the needed level of confidence in
that short time. I have been trying to engage users I work with to try
10.2 and did get DERBY-1546 reported that way, but that one struck me
as sort of low hanging fruit. I don't feel like we have the aggressive
10.2 testing we need.
Kathey
[1]http://wiki.apache.org/db-derby/TenTwoRelease
