Release management thoughts for Dapper Drake

Jeff Waugh jeff.waugh at ubuntu.com
Sat Oct 15 10:41:27 CDT 2005


<quote who="Florian Zeitz">

> >>We would still relase with 6 month cycle. We could have all the best
> >>goodies in Dapper for desktop, and have time to test it for server.
> > 
> > That would require changing dapper after it's "released", instead of
> > getting it right the first time (which will involve new ways of looking
> > at things, thus my proposal).
> 
> This is what is done right now. With this concept you release for Desktop
> with some minor bugs (which are OK for Desktop, but unaceptable for
> enterprise users) and than include the normal bufixes making it enterprise
> ready, within a certain time.

Right, but that's *not* what is done right now. Realistically, taking six
more months of branched stabilisation would require far more invasive
changes on the released branch, and a branched strategy would require far
more work across both branches... Not desireable at all.

> I might also be okay with your concept if the components I care about are
> brought to date (because they belong to a goal, or an exception depends on
> them), but that's not really the way I want to get what I want.

We have a slightly different goal for this release, so we get to think about
the problem slightly differently. I am sure we will update much of what we
ship, but we will do it 100% *knowingly* in each case, instead of just being
hammered by the general churn.

> 3. Try to be both at the same time (Your concept might work for this, but
> current user base might rebel and Ivans idea should work, but is not
> really possible right now, because of the promises you made)

Let's nuke this idea before it goes any further -> following this strategy
will not make our current user base rebel. I'm pretty sure my first email
was clear about the upload policy -> we'd still accept feature goals, fixes
and so on. If a few extremely volatile, impatient users find it offensive
that we refuse to automatically sync new versions of, say, core-utils, I
don't think we should be too concerned. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2006: Dunedin, New Zealand               http://linux.conf.au/
 
           "It's weird being without white noise." - Catie Flick



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