[rfc] six-month stable release cycles

[Guy Gascoigne-Piggford]

Strongly seconded.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 9:13 AM, DeeJay <smartgpx at gmail.com> wrote:

> " The Proposal: Bazaar will make a major release every six months,
> which will be supported at least until the time of the next major
> release. "
>
> I understand all the reasons put forward and have no disagreement with
> them.
>
> But can I ask for consideration for Windows users, perhaps supported
> by a change in the Release mechanism?
>
> At present, it seems that the formal release process does not
> acknowledge the existence of installers. So a release can pass all its
> own QA measures but still encounter problems when it is packaged into
> an installer. My experience is with the 'standalone' .exe installer
> for Windows, but perhaps similar problems are encountered by MacOSX
> users?  [As examples, 1.17rc1  - 'noise' related to rebase; and
> 1.17final - 'bzr help commands' - were both 'broken' on Windows via
> the Installer. It would be uncomfortable to have to live with such
> releases for 6 months.]
>
> Could packaging, and testing, of Installers be brought within the
> Release Management process? (I think I have seen it suggested
> elsewhere that if the 'core' team can't build and test on a platform
> for which support is claimed then they should be provided with that
> capability for the good of the project.)
>
> The download stats now visible on LP show upwards of 2,500 downloads
> of the standalone .exe installers for recent versions of bzr, so a lot
> of people could be impacted by a release that fails in packaging, and
> that could cause a lot of reputation damage to bzr. Of course you can
> produce a bug-fix release - but that undermines the "people don't know
> which version to package" argument that is part of the justification
> for change.
>
> Thanks for listening -
>
> David
>
>
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