Change list from 6.8 to HEAD, and 7.0 plans

[Adam Jackson]

On Saturday 09 April 2005 02:41, Kevin E Martin wrote:
> I think keeping the testing schedule tight is good since it keeps us
> focused; however, the amount of time required for testing depends on how
> quickly we get adequate coverage for the platforms we support.  I would
> like to see us create another test grid similar to what was done for the
> 6.8.0 release, but this time, I'd like to see significantly better
> coverage.  This will be a major release, and it deserves to be very well
> tested on all supported platforms.

I don't know how you enforce this though.  We can use the carrot of "wouldn't 
it be great if we had this release out by $DATE" or the stick of "we will be 
releasing on $DATE, if you care about your platform get a tinderclient going 
yesterday".

The carrot model doesn't seem to be working thus far, because we all agreed 
during 6.8 that we needed to move to a regular six-month-ish release cycle 
and that hasn't happened yet.  This tempts me to get out the stick.

I don't disagree with longer testing cycles, not at all.  But no one's going 
to _do_ them unless they have a little release date fear in them.  As 
evidence, the 6.8.99.1 snapshot has had all of 32 downloads.  I posit that no 
one is interested in making sure HEAD works because no one thinks a release 
is approaching.

What I was hoping for with that proposed schedule was for someone to speak up 
with concrete suggestions like "we should do weekly RCs instead", or "start 
the freeze earlier", or "that's wholly unrealistic and ajax should put down 
the crack pipe".  In a week, I got two responses, generally positive with the 
only objection being to start testing sooner.  I interpret this as consensus.

Therefore, dear reader:

- basic outline of the strawman schedule is accepted
- testing cycle should be started as soon as possible (this means you)
- remaining major changes in by early June at the latest
- release in mid-August

Don't say you weren't warned.

> If we could start getting tinderbox clients set up for major platforms
> and distros now, I think we might be in good shape for a late summer
> release.  It would also help us get a feel for how stable HEAD is today.

Personally I think HEAD is in decent shape, I run it for my daily server.

I mentioned in my first email in this thread that there are a couple of 
features I still want to land in HEAD before the next release.  Apparently 
I'm the only one, because a week has gone by and nobody else has mentioned 
anything they're working on for 7.0.

I find this unsettling.

- ajax
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