Is there any policy concern with publishing the binaries of alpha
releases, after vote, to a Apache snapshot repository which is not
replicated to Maven Central?
Chas
On 4/30/13 8:28 AM, "sebb" <seb...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 30 April 2013 15:51, Gilles <gil...@harfang.homelinux.org> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:36:10 -0700, Phil Steitz wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/29/13 11:49 PM, Thomas Vandahl wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 30.04.2013 00:01, Gilles wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> If someone doesn't develop a Commons component, he is not in the
>>>>> "developer"
>>>>> category for that component.
>>>>> If his app _uses_ a Commons component, he is a "user" of that
>>>>> component.
>>>>> This kind of users should indeed be encouraged to test snapshots,
>>>>> and
>>>>> report
>>>>> problems _before_ an official release is made.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I completely agree with you. Looking at the Commons components,
>>>> all "users" are also "developers" one way or another, as the
>>>> components are merley libraries, not applications.
>>>>
>>>> From what I understand of the Maven idea, snapshots are *the* way
>>>> binaries can be distributed for testing - including separate
>>>> storage in a separate repository. The whole repository
>>>> infrastructure was made for this. The snapshot status carries the
>>>> clear message that this binary is not for production use and can
>>>> change its API anytime. So why not use this?
>>>>
>>> The problem with "publicising" snapshots is that it makes it look
>>> like they are actual releases. This has been discussed a lot over
>>> the years, and we have settled on the policy [1] that anything that
>>> we encourage anyone beyond the developers actively following the dev
>>> list ("developers" per the definition above), *must* be treated as a
>>> release.
>>>
>>> [1]
>>>http://www.apache.org/dev/**release.html#what<http://www.apache.org/dev/
>>>release.html#what>
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for this clarification.
>>
>> Unfortunately, the description of "release" does not provide a solution
>> to the problem posed.
>> Essentially, it only forbids to ask for user feedback on "unreleased"
>>code.
>>
>>
>Not entirely; if a user is participating in development via bug reports
>and
>patches, they can be directed to snapshots for testing.
>
>
>> The only way out is to release:
>> "If this policy seems inconvenient, then release more often."
>>
>> But release what? "alpha", "beta"? Those are not defined there.
>> If such releases are done, then what policy wrt to user support?
>> E.g. do we _have_ to (quickly) create bug fix releases for such releases
>> (known to be more fragile)?
>>
>> This looks much more complicated than just asking interested parties to
>> "manually" download a nightly build (with all the caveats and warnings),
>> temporarily add it to their classpath and look for unexpected problems.
>>
>>
>It's not either/or here.
>
>Snapshots are not prohibited.
>
>It's possible for interested parties to use snapshots.
>
>
>> Gilles
>>
>>
>>
>>
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