On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 4:30 PM, sebb <seb...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 27/03/2010, Gary Gregory <ggreg...@seagullsoftware.com> wrote: >> Hi Hen, well done to get the ball rolling. More below. >> >> >> > -----Original Message----- >> > From: Henri Yandell [mailto:flame...@gmail.com] >> > Sent: Saturday, March 27, 2010 14:08 >> > To: Commons Developers List >> > Subject: [LANG][COLLECTIONS] Beta releases >> > >> > Possibly a query for IO too if it's 2.0 has large changes. >> > >> > Given the large API changes in Lang 3.0 and Collections 4.0, a beta >> > release seems like a very useful thing (kudos to pbenedict for >> > convincing of me that months ago on IM :) ). >> > >> > I'm interested in what advice and thoughts people might have on the >> > subject. Areas I can think of are: >> > >> > 1) versioning, does JIRA identify the version as 3.0-beta1; or just >> > have a 3.0 and treat the beta as an invisible release? I'm preferring >> > the latter. >> >> >> I think there is also "nightly-build" available. If bugs are logged against >> "3.0" and fixed in "3.0", then the understanding is that the bug was fixed >> in the alpha/beta/RC cycle. It seems fine if a little mysterious though. +0. >> > > Surely you can just add whatever versions you like to the JIRA configuration?
I don't want someone to come along later and have to figure out what 3.0 was from the release notes from N 3.0 alpha, beta, gamma releases. And I don't want to have to modify lots of issues later to roll into a 3.0. >> > 2) Maven - does the beta go to the main Maven repo, or just tell >> > people to pull from snapshot (and make sure there are current >> > snapshots in the snapshot repo)? I'm thinking the latter. >> >> >> +1 > > Agreed, should go to snapshot repo. If there are subsequent API breaks > then having the beta in the main repo is likely to cause grief to > others and to us at some point. > >> >> >> > 3) Announcements - blogging, announce@ type announcements presumably. >> >> >> +1. Same as for a release I would think since we are talking about important >> changes and asking for feedback. A broad audience is required. >> > > +1 > >> >> > 4) Length of time spent in beta. I think we should define this up >> > front. >> >> >> +1. At least 1 month? I would also like to see at least 1 week pre-beta >> warning to allow interested committers to put this on their radar and >> contribute before the beta goes out. Fair enough. And I'm thinking 3->6 months. Possibly 3 months with a 2nd beta then for 3 more months. >> > The intent would be to get early adopters using and finding bugs, but >> > more importantly drive conversation around the API changes and suggest >> > new ones. I want us to be able to change an API without having to say >> > "Yeah, that was dumb - sadly we have to wait 'til 5.0". >> >> >> That sounds like a good intention, IMO this means at least 2 betas, 1) ask >> for feedback, 2) provide new alpha/beta with feedback changes. >> >> Tangent: If we are talking about changing APIs, shouldn't these really be >> called Alphas and leave a Beta out for a stable API and bug finding only? >> The drawback is that it might harder to get interest from a wide audience on >> more than one pre-release version. >> > > +1 Alpha to be used for fluid APIs. > -1 API changes allowed in Betas. Betas sound pretty pointless then in this case :) You'd be mad to sign up for no API changes in beta for a release with major API changes (unless you follow beta-1 with alpha-4). > So long as the rationale for the naming is well explained - i.e. that > Alpha is only used because the API might change, not because of the > intrinsic quality of the implementation - I'm hopeful Alpha/Beta won't > put people off. *shrug* :) I don't tend to see public alpha releases anymore, "beta" seems to be the phrase for 'this is out, but we're making no promises' even if it doesn't make logical sense for there never to be visible alpha releases. Call it early-access, or developer-preview :) Hen --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@commons.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@commons.apache.org
