Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 12:03:32PM -0800, Eric Sandall wrote:
> Quoting David Kowis <dkowis AT shlrm.org>:
> > Alexander Tsamutali wrote:
> >>> I'd like to have a freeze on the grimoire when we come up to release
> >>> time. No commits to test until we've finished fixing the bugs that have
> >>> to be fixed. That's it. No exceptions. "Real" software processes work
> >>> this way. You've a feature freeze and then you work on the release.
> >>> Anything spiffy or unneccesary is omitted, or put off until later. We
> >>> don't do that. We're pretty lax.
> >>
> >> That's exactly what i proposed here:
> >> https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/sm-discuss/2007-January/015995.html
> >> Can we adopt such process?
> >
> > Close to what I'm thinking of. Except let's not just limit it to QA
> > leads or anything. Anyone can commit to stable-rc at this time, perhaps
> > they operate through submitting patches through the leads, or a group of
> > volunteers, so that it's guaranteed to be peer-reviewed. But we
> > completely lock down the test grimoire, it's frozen. stable-rc gets it's
> > bugs fixed, and the release is pushed out to stable.
> 
> While that sounds as though it would get stable-rc/stable updated,  
> keep in mind that we're all volunteers and have 'advertised' that we  
> let developers work on what they want. If we didn't, I believe we'd  
> have fewer developers, or at least commits from developers, until we  
> re-opened. Or I could be completely off and being more strict about  
> who does what might encourage people to work on bugs and have others  
> join (showing that we are an 'organization' and not 'a group of  
> developers with common interest').
> 
> Perhaps a trial of the freeze method is in order?
> 

Well, stable-rc kind of approximates that freeze, we dont put version
bumps in it, and, in theory we fix the bugs in the spells we care about.

Hypothetically, we could remove stable-rc and freeze test, then once
test meets our standards (some subset of spells "works"), then release
it. However people will just start submitting there version bumps to
devel (where else?). And devel will become what test is now. Devel right
now means something else, so we'd end up merging the current definition
of test with that of devel. Or, we'd make another "really-devel" grimoire.

The thing about stable-rc is that it recognizes there are 4 stages,
not 3. If we remove one of the steps, we inadvertantly merge stages
together, and then, as history shows, we'll waste yet more time arguing
about what the 2 stages represent. So, I think freezing is a step backwards.



-Andrew

-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
| Andrew D. Stitt  | acedit at armory.com    | astitt at sourcemage.org | 
| irc: afrayedknot | Sorcery Team Lead       |      ftp://t.armory.com/ |
| 1024D/D39B096C   | 76E4 728A 04EE 62B2 A09A 96D7 4D9E 239B D39B 096C  |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------