We briefly discussed release strategies and branching in our OCT meeting, too brief to start a TIP process, therefore I will state my understanding of the current discussion and invite anybody to chime in, so we can prepare a TIP after the next OCT meeting.
This deals with the future releases and tries to avoid the basic troubles that we faced with the latest release. This said, it is obvious to all involved parties that the last release is a special case, as so many things have been changed in one go and we do not forsee this happening in 2004.
OpenACS is going to stick with a firm release date, laxed feature strategy. This means, we set four release dates each year, where we will put out a release. One months before the release date we will have a feature freeze and run the release branch to fix bugs. New development will happen on HEAD. Once a release has been made, only security patches will be applied to it.
One week before the date of the feature freeze a call will be made for commitement to the release. If enough people can commit time to the release, we are branching and getting the release cycle going. If not, we are skipping this release date. It is up to the release manager to decide, if the commitment is strong enough to warrant a release. This should prevent us from dragging releases out for ages, as noone is able to work on them.
Along with the call for commitment, we will define additional release criteria, if necessary, particular to this release. The standard release criterias still hold true for each single release.
We will have an open space where people can submit features and the release time, so we have an overview what is in the pipeline. This does *not* mean, we are waiting for features. If they are not in by feature freeze, they are not making it into the release. Again, this list will only give an overview of the pipeline and help with coordination.
I kindly ask the OCT and all other interested parties to post their views and statements til Jan 13, so we can prepare a TIP after the next OCT meeting.
