My understanding of the Apache way on releases is the complete contrary. According to [1] a release in the Apache sense of the word is something that has "been approved for general public release, with varying degrees of caveat regarding their perceived quality or potential for change". AIUI that means that we declare the qualitity of the release beforehand and not afterwards. If we want to take that approach we should distribute release candidates, which are not Apache releases, and have users test them. In fact renaming a release, e.g. by promoting it from beta to GA status, might even be against the rule that no released artifact may ever be modified. See [2] for some guidance. The right way would be to cut another release.
I guess we can continue as before. The only thing I'd like to see changed is the addition of the status of the release to the version number. I.e. alpha, beta, ... Alternatively we can change our process and introduce release candidates. The first stable release of 5.3 could be 5.3.1 and before we release it we could have 5.3.1-alpha, -alpha2, -beta, -RC1, -RC2 and in the end just 5.3.1. The intermediate releases would be test packages and wouldn't need a formal vote, thus making it easier for developers to get the code in the open and tested. It would also greatly help our users understand of what quality the code is. A release with no additions to the version number is a voted-upon stable release that they can readily use in their applications whereas -(alpha.*|beta.*|RC.*) releases are releases which we don't deem production-ready. Uli [1] http://www.apache.org/dev/release.html#release-typeso [2] http://incubator.apache.org/guides/releasemanagement.html On 23.06.2011 05:51, Howard Lewis Ship wrote: > The Apache way, which I like, is to evaluate a release's stability > AFTER it is out in user's hands. Thus we vote to release a version, > say 5.3.217, and after its been out and in use, we vote to upgrade it > from "beta" (or even "release candidate") to final/stable/GA (choose > your term). I think its a good system, that reflects the reality of > complex code and leveraging the community to discover problems. > > On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 5:40 PM, ael <[email protected]> wrote: >> In Netbeans >> >> Release Candidate RC1 >> >> >> Release Candidate RC2 >> >> >> Final Release >> >> -- >> View this message in context: >> http://tapestry.1045711.n5.nabble.com/A-question-of-vocabulary-release-vs-version-vs-tp4515917p4515999.html >> Sent from the Tapestry - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com. >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] >> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >> >> > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
