Re: release 3.2.1

[Søren Hauberg]

tor, 09 07 2009 kl. 14:14 -0700, skrev Robert T. Short:
> Is there to be no comment on this at all?  Both Daniel and I have made 
> the same comments for the same reasons and probably because we have both 
> experienced problems like this before.  It isn't that Jaroslav is doing 
> a bad job, but rather that the process (or rather lack of process) is 
> guaranteed to have significant problems.

Well, I agree that Jaroslav is _not_ doing a bad job. Release management
is just surprisingly hard (I've managed to screw up every single
Octave-Forge release I've ever made...).

I haven't commented on the suggestions related to how to fix this, as it
seems like what is being asked for is more man-power. Basically, we need
a set of beta testers that are willing to use release candidates for a
couple of months before that final release is made. The big problem with
this is that currently when a new release is branched, development still
goes on in the main branch. Personally, I tend to run a version that is
a recent checkout from the main branch, so I qualify for being a beta
tester. However, if development is going on in the main branch, then I'd
prefer to run that rather than the soon-to-be-released-beta-branch. I
mean, if I'm gonna run development versions, then I might as well live
on the bleeding edge, right?

Anyway, my point is just that to improve release quality, we need more
testers. We actually have a bunch of such testers, but they all tend to
run the latest development version rather than the latest release
candidate. The only solution I see (as long as we don't have more
man-power), is to only have one branch of development.

Soren