[RFC] Releases planning

[Vincent Ladeuil]

>>>>> Gordon Tyler <gordon at doxxx.net> writes:

    > On Thu, October 7, 2010 11:47 am, Vincent Ladeuil wrote:
    >> >> +
    >> >> + * there should not be more than 2 releases in the same week (but
    >> the
    >> >> +   Release Manager is free to ignore this (get in touch with
    >> packagers
    >> >> +   though),
    >> 
    >> > Do packagers prefer this rule?
    >> 
    >> Yes, I'd like to know too :) Hey packagers ! What do you think ?

    > It may lead to less confusion when I'm working with three different
    > branches of nearly identical packager config code. :)

    > It's not a strong preference, but I think it's an improvement.

Thanks for confiming my feeling. I'd like us (packagers and devs) to
focus on this point for the 2.3b2 installers.

I'd like this specific point of switching from one release to the other
to be crystal clear and easy to use and control. I use different working
trees myself but experimenting with colocated branches, looms, versioned
configuration files is welcome, whatever works :)

<snip/>

    > Fine by me. I would also like more guidance on which versions of plugins
    > to include.

Well, we just bumped the bzrlib API so I expect some discussions to pop
up :)

I would be nice to compare notes between various packaging teams and
settle on a common format. Since it's called config.py in the OSX
packages, I consider it a *serious* hint that this should be supported
by the bzr configuration files.

Note that I'm not proposing that all distribution should carry the same
versions of all plugins (or python or testools or you name it) at this
point. But since we are about to update at least some of them, then
let's start by converging on these ones.

    > I'm just guessing and using the most recent released version
    > unless I have to use a specific repo revision for some reason,
    > e.g. the compile bug in subvertpy on Mac OS X 10.5.

And I think it's definitely fine for the betas versions !

We want as much plugins as possible to be able to be tested with the 2.3
series. It's the perfect occasion for them to deliver their new
features.

As long as we kept the revid that is shipped with any installer we are
quite free to diverge even more since that's only our second beta. 

    >> prompted when the ppa is updated *anyway*. May be bzr-explorer
    >> can also gain a 'check updates' feature for windows and OSX...

    > Shouldn't be difficult with a dedicated URL to check for a small
    > data file containing the latest verions.

Wait, are you already referring to the configuration file I alluded
about above ? :-P

Could be as simple as:

,----
| # Common to all known distributions
| gtk.revision = (url, revid:joe at example.com-20101008084634-2n694dx9fhg9m2nb)
| 
| # OSX specifics
| [osx-10.5] 
| gtk.revision = (url, tip)
| gtk.destdir = %(plugins_dir)s/gtk
| packages = paramiko, pyqt, launchpadlib
| plugins = email, colo, loom, fastimport
`----


whatever. 

Interpolation and sections are not supported in core so far, but we are
discussing new ways to use the configurations so since we are only
collection infos, the data is more important than the exact format.

        Vincent