[rfc] six-month stable release cycles

[Vincent Ladeuil]

>>>>> "jam" == John Arbash Meinel <john at arbash-meinel.com> writes:
    >>> Given those changes, what is the driver behind continuing to do monthly
    >>> releases? Who is the audience for those exactly?


    jam> Arguably packaging is a primary factor here.

I couldn't agree more :-)

Our more active beta testers are either using:
- bzr.dev and run from source + build extensions
- installers a.k.a. windows and OS X users

So yes, packaging is key and proposing installers every month is
a very valuable goal for *us*.

Of course it also means we need to run the full test suite on as
many buildbot slaves as possible (is that a shameless plug ?).

    jam> In my opinion we can also do something which brings in most of what you
    jam> want. Namely:

    jam> 1) Plan to release a beta every 4weeks, without an RC period.
    jam> 2) If a given beta has obvious issues, plan to release the next beta in
    jam> 1 week, rather than 4 weeks. (Similar to how we would go from RC1 +
    jam> minor fixes => final.)

    jam> This avoids always generating 2 releases, but gives the
    jam> same stability guarantees that we have today.

Full agreement.

    jam> I don't think nightlies give anything like the same
    jam> experience of monthlies. Even if a person only upgraded
    jam> once a month, there is a lot of unknowns in saying "I'm
    jam> at bzr.dev 4452" rather than "1.17rc1". If only to make
    jam> sure you get more than 1 person testing a given
    jam> "release".  If you stick with dailies, then everyone
    jam> running will be at a slightly different version.

Yes, we don't want a more fragmented population that we already
have today.

In fact, I think providing better packaging, even if we need to
initially invest time and energy to get there, will give us a
better feedback overall because when we someone reports a bug in
a given bzr/plugin combination and we (in bug comments) say:
please try again with a newer version... some users are just
fubared because they just can't upgrade their setup.

     Vincent