Here is the wikipedia definition for Pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta, etc..
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_release
The definitions pretty much agree with my preconception of what an Alpha
would contain.
IMHO, trunk is not currently in an Alpha state and doesn't accurately
reflect the "majority of the software requirements" that will be
addressed in G1.2.
It seems that trunk is currently in a pre-alpha state and I believe
making an occasional unstable/nightly build available would allow
users/developers to get familiar with the latest and greatest functions
in trunk without giving the false impression that G1.2 is currently in
Alpha state.
Just my .02
-Dave-
Jason Dillon wrote:
I am thinking about an 1.2-alpha release, which does not need to pass
any tck, but can still be downloaded by folks that want to test their
apps on the bleeding edge (with out having to build). While there is
nothing major from a J2EE perspective in the alpha, a lot has changed,
or will change very shortly. Here is a list with comments of new and
upcoming stuff:
ActiveMQ 4.1, is about to get committed.
Derby is about to get upgraded.
Log4j is about to get upgraded.
Use of concurrent util is about to get changed to backport-concurrent-util.
Lets not forget that we changed the build system, which mostly impacts
development, but also has an impact on the configuration files, and
plugins... new CAR m2 plugin. I think it would be really good to get an
alpha out so that people can easily test and provide feedback.
New m2 plugin to start/stop Geronimo, soon to have new deploy goals.
A bunch of bug fixes.
* * *
I think that by releasing a 1.2-alpha, that we also start down the path
of changing the perception of how quickly we release. The alpha can
also serve to help us get some experience using the m2 release plugin so
that when it comes time for a non-alpha/beta release that we have
confidence in the procedure... and this will give us time to make sure
that we have the right configurations and setup to make a release with
relative ease.
Also, more of a side effect, by making a new release, it helps control
the JIRA roadmap, right now 1.2 is filled with a bunch of build system
related fluff and other bits...
I think that we have enough changes (or soon to change in the next days
or so) to warrant an alpha. I don't see any reason why not to... we
don't need to spend days/weeks to ensure the TCK passes, because we
don't need to run it. It should be sufficient to vote on an alpha and
then cut the release, which should be easy with the maven release
plugin, and even easier with my gpg-sign'ing mojo to sign and upload all
artifacts.
I believe that having this alpha out will benefit our community, showing
that we are going to start releasing more often, give people a chance to
provide feedback more often an earlier.
I certainly do not expect any production customers to use this, but I do
expect that app developers will, so they can ready their apps for
deployment on the platform. We will clearly label this as an alpha
release, and clear state that it has not been TCK certified.
I don't see any downside to cutting a release off of trunk soonish, in
the next week or so.
--jason
On Sep 6, 2006, at 9:13 AM, Kevan Miller wrote:
On Sep 5, 2006, at 4:40 PM, Dain Sundstrom wrote:
According to our STATUS file, our last feature release (1.1) was on
2006-06-26 which is about 2.5 months ago. I'm not sure exactly what
we have in trunk right now, but I'd guess we most likely have enough
to do a release right now. I'm going to spend a few hours today
browsing the JIRAs and SVN logs and compile a list of the features we
have in trunk right now. Anyways, I'll let you know what I find and
we can figure out what we want to do.
I'd be interested to hear more concretely what's in Geronimo trunk,
OpenEJB 2.2, etc that's not in 1.1.1...
--kevan
