Hello Laszlo, thanks for such a smooth release! There has been a discussion about the "great master plan for NetBeans releases" on this mailing list. Let me express my opinion here. This is "A-patch-e" project. Originally Apache was founded as a web page for people to exchange patches and do releases. I believe the best plan for the Apache NetBeans project is to deliver regular releases. Exactly as you guys have managed to do for the last two years. A release per quarter (+- a month). There is a tremendous value in reliably assembling the patches together and I am really glad I can participate in such a well organized project!
- It seems managing the master, delivery and release branches worked > well without headache or too much overhead. +1 - the idea with the delivery branch is so ingenious (and also "trivial", just to get it!) that I believe it is a great principle to follow. Not only in NetBeans, but in any other project that keeps development in two active branches in parallel for a while! I'd like to thank you (as the release co-ordinator) for allowing us to sneak in a side-release of VSNetBeans. We are really glad we got the opportunity even though we came with the idea up so late. Unlike other voices, I believe the participation of those interested in VSNetBeans can help the whole NetBeans project get better: https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2471 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2464 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2427 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2393 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2309 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2523 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2424 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2407 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2396 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2390 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2360 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2358 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2481 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2474 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2467 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2452 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2436 https://github.com/apache/netbeans/pull/2429 We'd like to include VSNetBeans `.vsix` file as a regular convenience binary in the future NetBeans releases, if possible. However, as the state of VSNetBeans is still very experimental, we'd like to also do more frequent releases as Jan Lahoda indicated in another mailing thread. - We need to add an API change review round even before branching for > the release. The round we had during this release convinced me that it > is required. Right. When the API changes are noticed too late in the release cycle, it is hard to fix them. Doing the manual review earlier is one option. The other one is to set an infrastructure up to notify us about API changes just before they are made. A bot checking every PR and labeling it with an "API change" sticker is certainly possible. Then the reviews would happen continuously throughout the whole development cycle. We still have not decided how the 12.3 and 13.0 would relate to each > other. (as the other side of the LTS topic) > 13.0 shall be a bugfix version of 12.3 (or am I mistaken)? Full NetCat testing. No new features (except VSNetBeans, maybe ;-). In the light of success of the `delivery` branch: let's create the `delivery` branch as soon as 12.3 is out. `master` would be open for work on 13.1. `delivery` would be for bugfixing. > - Our love and hate relationship to nb-javac needs to be resolved. We > suggest people to go without it, then we suggest people to try that. > Also with the current release we see an increased amount of NPE-s and > parsing errors. Everybody (else) seems to hate nb-javac! Two directions of thinking: 1. nb-javac is available as an open source project and individuals can help it where corporate seems slightly incapable. 2. we need to get rid of nb-javac. #1 is a short term thing. #2 is a long term (~ a year) thing. I've been discussing possible ways to implement #2 and I think it can be done, if JDK's javac is improved with currently missing IDE-friently capabilities. More on that in a separate email later. Thanks everyone for continuing to release Apache NetBeans at such a regular pace! -jt
