bzr 2.1 retrospective

[Ben Finney]

Martin Pool <mbp at canonical.com> writes:

> 2.1 is out, it's a good product, and I'd like to now have a bit of a
> retrospective around the release and the whole cycle
[…]

> I want this to be about the experience of development
[…]

This is really great to see, as someone who uses Bazaar and doesn't hack
it. Having these internal conversations out in the open to be observed
and referenced as a matter of public record is *enormously* reassuring
for me as a beneficiary of this project.

> * change: look harder at +assigned or +inprogress before starting
> something new; get this down to zero and then there'll be more freedom
> to choose

Right. I think everyone knows intellectually that this is the sensible
thing to do; but intellect rarely drives our moment-to-moment decisions.
When we get time to work on a project it's natural to automatically go
for the work that makes us feel good: the shiny new stuff.

So it's important to recognise that human tendency, and actively set
things up to positively divert more of that effort toward the
outstanding uncompleted work.

There's a danger in direct “incentives”, in that having too many of them
tends to suppress rather than reinforce the desire to do the work. On
the other hand it may be good to try setting up the work flow such that
there's unusually low resistance to work on outstanding tasks.

> * change: Insist on zero changes between the last rc and the final
> release? This may be waste though; making the release takes some work
> and it's not necessarily worth doing another cycle to squash the
> probability to absolutely zero.

I think the correct answer there is to work on getting the release so
it's *not* a significant hassle to make one.

> Packaging for Windows continues to be a headache, with it being
> somewhat labour intensive and specialized.

How do primarily-Windows projects deal with automation of packaging,
then? Should Canonical be seeking explicit donation of resources (time
on external machines, etc.) to make use of those techniques that
automate such a build?

> * change: maintain a "What's new" document

Much appreciated by this user, certainly.

> Here's to a great 2.2 cycle,

Thanks, Bazaar team!

-- 
 \       “Following fashion and the status quo is easy. Thinking about |
  `\        your users' lives and creating something practical is much |
_o__)                                harder.” —Ryan Singer, 2008-07-09 |
Ben Finney