Re: [RFC] 3.1 branching

On Wed, 2008-09-24 at 12:21 +0200, Henrik Nordstrom wrote:
> On tis, 2008-09-23 at 23:30 -0600, Alex Rousskov wrote:
>
> > PRE, to me, means "we think it is stable, what do you think?".
> > A development release, to me, means "we are done adding features, please
> > help us with testing and polishing". And yes, I know that the
> > definitions at http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/ are somewhat
> > different. IIRC, I failed to convince others that mine are better :-)
>
> You are off-by-one from what we normally use
>
> DEVEL - We are still adding features, but this release is beleived to be
> reasonably stable suitable for evaluating what has been done so far.
>
> PRE - We are done adding features. Please help us hunting down the last
> bugs.
>
> RC - No more known bugs to fix. We think it's stable. Please verify.
>
> STABLE - We think it's stable production release.

Oh boy, I forgot about yet another undocumented stage -- RC! I wonder
what "PRE" stands for then. Pre-RC?! This is just plain wrong.

> DEVEL releases is rarely needed as the nightly snapshot releases serves
> this purpose well. Came to light during the very extended Squid-3.0
> development cycle with lots of major restructuring and destabilization
> taking place..

The DEVEL label is not needed indeed, but I was talking about code
states. I understand now that you use the PRE state for a different
purpose. Please note that your definitions of DEVEL and PRE differ from
the ones on the web site.

The most annoying thing, IMO, is that the official and your definitions
above have two fuzzy lines for DEVEL and PRE states: stability and
features. One fuzzy line is tolerable, but two make things really
confusing.

> > > The non-major but important bugs can be fixed during DEVEL and PRE
> > > cycles. Branching is about features not bugs.
> >
> > Agreed, except I do not think we should have any known important bugs
> > when doing the first PRE (if we do PRE at all).
>
> Yes. It's not much use in releaseing a PRE with known major blockers.

But your definition above says we are still hunting down some bugs. It
does not say there are no major bugs left.

How about this:

Trunk: Experimental code and new major features are being added. Use
daily snapshots (e.g., HEAD-YYYYMMDD). No label.

... time passes, more features are added ...

Branching point (e.g., 3.1): All major features are in. Use daily
snapshots (e.g., 3.1-YYYYMMDD). No label.

... time passes, all known major bugs get fixed ...

First numbered release (e.g., 3.1.0): All known major bugs fixed. Could
be labeled a "beta" or "development" release if needed.

... time passes, more beta releases are made, with fewer bugs ...

Branch first marked as "stable" (e.g., 3.1.5): The last numbered release
turned out to be stable!

... time passes, the stable branch is maintained ...

Branch marked as "end of life" or "no longer supported".

Cheers,

Alex.
Received on Wed Sep 24 2008 - 14:45:20 MDT