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
Release management IS hard. It is the Achilles heel of many, many
software systems.