On 11/09/2007, at 2:59 AM, Jason van Zyl wrote:
Hi,
For 2.1 I have been trying to lock down all the versions so that
the dependencies are stable. When I need to fix something in
classworlds, plexus, or modello, I just make the fix, install, test
and if everything works deploy it and lock down the versions in the
build and continue.
I would like to do the same with maven-artifact and get a little
more agile, and not force people to use a snapshot. For alphas I
think it would be acceptable to get 3 +1s from PMC members and then
push it out. For anything in beta or beyond it's the standard
procedure, but pushing out an alpha or incremental release just
takes too long and it is in those times of flux that the bugs in
the snapshot mechanism bite you.
I certainly applaud more frequent releases, but I don't think this
rapid an approach is going to be helpful.
While it's probably not the case for m-artifact, more generally you
start to see too many different versions of things that aren't
compatible floating around and causing problems (c.f. plexus). At
least with snapshots people pretty quickly converge to the same binary.
I think the problems are most often because the latest snapshot is
not built/published. I can automate that from Continuum right now if
we want that, so I don't think that's an issue.
I think this will also force us to start changing things to what
they are. Doxia for example should probably be a beta, not an alpha.
Making alpha releases easier than betas will *discourage* them being
changed to what they are.
I want to be able to fix things in maven-artifact as using
SNAPSHOTs is not good for external dependencies, but I don't want
to be grounded for 3 days while I wait to release maven-artifact in
order to pick up a stable set of changes.
If components/trunk needs to track changes in m-artifact that
closely, something is wrong. If I were to take an extreme opposite
viewpoint (and I realise it's not practical, but it serves as an
example) - since we're committing to keeping the old APIs working,
everything could really be done in m-artifact first, and Maven
flipped at the end.
I would like to see m-artifact built to work on it's own, so anything
that nudges it towards that is a good thing.
We can use timestamps too I suppose, but then what's the difference
really. I just want to get the 2.1 release out faster.
Sorry, I just don't see anything that indicates this will help the
release get out faster.
I think it's really about getting a better balance - release more
often than we do now, but still spend the time to consider what that
release should mean, and ensure it retains a level of compat,
stability and testing that makes it a safe upgrade.
Cheers,
Brett
--
Brett Porter - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Blog: http://www.devzuz.org/blogs/bporter/
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