Bazaar Explorer 1.0beta ready for testing

[Ian Clatworthy]

Martin Pool wrote:

> I have some qualms about taking lots of changes in to plugins after
> bzr 2.1.0rc1.  Bazaar itself is supposed to have bugfixes only from
> that point on, and I think shipped plugins should take the same
> approach.  Specifically I don't want us to ship any plugin changes
> post rc1 unless we're sure they're safe fixes.

Well I did outline my plans for releasing a 1.0beta of Explorer to be
packaged with 2.1.0 two weeks ago and no-one complained or commented at
the time. See https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/bazaar/2010q1/066356.html.

> The point of the release process is to release a good version of the
> features we have at the rc point, not to do further development.

Right. I'll be cutting the 1.0 stable branch tomorrow morning when I tag
1.0.0beta. Post 1.0beta, the focus will be on fixing bugs and updating
translations (so strings will be frozen too). No new features will go
into the stable branch.

In terms of quality, I've been testing the new stuff pretty heavily. The
#1 issue in terms of potential breakage is older PyQt versions (than
that in karmic) require QtCore.QVariant() wrappers around passed
arguments now and then, e.g. bug #516645. It takes a minute or two to
fix these when I know about them. (FWIW, those bugs would go away if our
installers went with a more recent version of PyQt as I thought we had
semi-agreed to do.)

Looking forward, my intention is to ship Explorer 1.0.0 by month end (or
earlier if required to met the Lucid deadline). That's the branch I'll
be maintaining as a stable branch for the next 12 months, not one based
on 0.11.

With Explorer 1.0.0 going into Lucid and 1.0beta being the stable
branch, I'd like the Windows & OS X installers to package 1.0beta. It's
not my call though - it's up to those doing the packaging.

Ian C.