New 1.14 RC date?

[Andrew Bennetts]

Ian Clatworthy wrote:
> I'd like to hold off doing the 1.14rc release this Friday and
> target Wed/Thu next week say, instead. The chk stuff looks
> like it's coming along nicely but I can't see us merging it
> all into bzr.dev this week in a safe, fully reviewed way.

Like several other people have said, I'm strongly against slipping the
release date so that we can land something at the last minute.  It was a
mistake for 1.0 and 1.6 and I think it would be as much of a mistake to do
so here.

What happens is that once you start slipping the pressure is to keep
slipping even if the landing turns out to take more time than expected, and
then when the difficult landing finally does happen it is likely to be a bit
rushed and it's by definition last-minute in the release cycle, which in
turn leads to poor quality or further slippage (in the form of a longer than
scheduled RC phase) — or both.

By the time that happens, you're halfway into what would have been the
following release anyway, so you've gained a measly two weeks in exchange
for considerable stress.

On the other hand, is the chk stuff actually going to be so hard to bring
in?  The barrier for landing it is much lower than for e.g. branch stacking,
because it's only a development format.  It's *fine* for it to have
deficiencies and even bugs, so long as:

 a) it doesn't destabilise or impede work on supported features, and
 b) it is at least somewhat useful for gathering feedback from users.

Strictly speaking, even b) is optional, especially landing sooner means less
integration effort in the long run.

-Andrew.