On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 2:47 PM, J. Cliff Dyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I agree with the sentiment of this, but we've passed the point where > it's a useful argument.
I'll concede that if you'll concede that we've also passed the point where issuing interim pre-1.0 releases offers any real gain over finishing 1.0 ;) > * A year and a half (with still a major branch to be committed before > 1.0 lands and no release date in sight) is *not* too frequently to have > a couple incompatible updates. The longer the stretch before 1.0, the > less true this argument becomes. People have been saying that they'd like to see, for example, a six-month release schedule. That's about the shortest that's practicable in terms of expecting people to go through the upgrade process. But since this time last year, I count the equivalent of four major breaking (in the sense of either "loses backwards compatibility, or otherwise requires significant effort to port across) changes and a fifth is on the way. Assuming, as I hope it will, the newforms-admin is done within the next couple of months, that's equivalent to a "release cycle" of 2-3 months with a non-trivial upgrade process along the way. So following several folks' suggestion of releasing every time a big breaker lands would have pushed us through 0.97, 0.98, 0.99 and probably two more *pre-1.0* non-trivial upgrade processes in just over a year. I don't see that as a smart thing to do. > * Further nobody is going to be forced to update just because it has a > number on it any more than they're forced to keep up with trunk. In a "release early, release often" scheme, yes they will, because -- as I've pointed out already -- such a scheme would push at least two releases over the support cliff. Plus, third-party apps would likely track the latest stable release on a faster schedule, which means that there would be no alleviation of the "I'm on Django xxxx and the app I want to use is on Django yyyy" problem people have complained about. > In > fact, there will be less pressure to update, because security patches > will be backported. Nope. At the very least, 0.96 and a hypothetical 0.97 would lose support before 1.0, and potentially (depending on how aggressive a hypothetical release schedule you want) a hypothetical 0.98 would lose support too. And no support == time to upgrade. > * The only exception is, as you mention people who are relying on third > party apps, but this doesn't hold water either, because many third party > apps are actually based on trunk (or worse! branches of trunk). My point about third-party apps is simply to note that more frequent releases would not alleviate versioning issues with third-party apps. "My codebase and apps are written for pre-autoescape trunk but this third-party app I need is written for post-qsrf trunk" is fundamentally no different from "my codebase and apps are written for Django 0.97, but this third-party app I need is written for Django 0.99". In other words, more frequent releases do not solve this problem (unless of course, we're talking about 1.x releases where compatibility within the line would be maintained). > I do see from Adrian's post above that there is some rethinking of the > release schedule going on now. If so, I missed it; I don't see anything from Adrian in this thread. > As you said, there's a trade-off to be > had with releasing now and holding off to 1.0, but as the interval > stretches out, the balance shifts toward the need to release, and maybe > we've reached the threshold where the problems with the current release > plan are starting to outweigh the benefits. At this point, I don't see any possible gain to be had. With one large-scale item left to land on the 1.0 checklist (everything else is smaller and/or more distributed in terms of workload and/or doesn't involve breaking changes) and with development ramping up on that item (newforms-admin) to get it done, I don't see how an interim release would be anything other than a slap in users' faces: "OK, you begged for a release before 1.0, so here it is, so close to the time of 1.0 that it's practically pointless." -- "Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct -- the best kind of correct." --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
