On 10/03/2012 06:26 PM, R. David Murray wrote:
On Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:02:03 +0200, Larry Hastings <la...@hastings.org> wrote:
Changing an existing alpha to be earlier doesn't alter the workload, but
I fear it makes the alpha less relevant. Evaluating alphas / betas
takes an investment of time, and whether or not a potential alpha user
makes that investment depends on what they expect to get out of testing
the alpha. If they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts,
just to help Python--well, that's fabulous, and more / earlier alphas
might actually interest them. But my suspicion is that most people who
try the alphas are doing early integration testing with their own
stuff. For those people, the earlier the alpha, the less interesting it
probably is to them. Earlier means that the software will be less
finished. It will be buggier, it won't have as many features as the
beta will. As a result it won't be as revealing--or as relevant--as a
later alpha or even a beta. If that's their perspective, I suspect
they'll be less likely to try an earlier alpha.
In my perception (again, I can't point to any raw data) there is an
opposite dynamic that happens in stable projects that produce alphas
throughout the release cycle. In those projects, people will often
run the alphas, even in production[1], in order to get the new features
sooner.
Python is a stable project. Even our alphas do not as a rule brown bag,
though their suitability for specific projects depends on the bugs found.
I think Python *could* be in this camp, if we wanted to be.
I agree.
(I'm not addressing release-team load here, I'm just making an
observation.)
As for release-team load: after the first alpha is done the subsequent ones
are quite lightweight from the main RM perspective. Regarding the Mac/Windows
builds, there's no law saying that only one person is allowed to make binaries
for a given version. We should by now have at least two for each platform;
Ned and Ronald for Mac, and AFAIK Brian Curtin has volunteered to fill in for
Martin in emergencies anyway.
As soon as betas arrive, of course it makes sense for the release team to stay
the same to ensure a smooth road to final.
Georg
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