2.2 beta 2 reminder

[Modestas Vainius]

Hello,

On pirmadienis 14 Rugsėjis 2009 11:03:06 Lydia Pintscher wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 14, 2009 at 09:35, Bart Cerneels <bart.cerneels at kde.org> wrote:
> > Beta 2 is coming to fast for me. I'm currently drowning in work and
> > house planning. Could this be delayed for another week.
> > Or will there be a beta 3 for sure? In any case, the podcast support
> > is missing functionality that in my and the users mind can not be
> > missing from any feature release.
> 
> There is no plan right now for beta 3. Either we do final by 28th or
> we will have another 6 months of Kubuntu and Fedora users with even
> worse podcast support because they will be using 2.1, no? That means
> another 2 weeks to work on stuff. I know that is tight but that's what
> we have to work with.

FWIW, I do not believe that you can get a good product in ~4 weeks from the 
release of the first development version. Given this schedule, it is already 
obvious that 2.2.1 will be much less critical-bug free than 2.2.0 even before 
the latter is released. I do believe that if the release process was extended 
to 1,25-1,5 months, 2.2.0 would be much better (even if not yet suitable for 
distro final release, but distro requirements vary).

However, still concerns about obsolete versions (2.1) in fresh distros are 
valid. So while you cannot change the date of the first Beta 1 nor the final 
release date, I suggest the following for 2.2 release process:

1) Shorten current "packager delay" period at least in half (to 24-36 hours) 
for development versions. You just can't afford long delay at the moment, you 
need more testers of the current (not 3 days old) code base ASAP. Those 
distros, who care, will package it for their own good, those who don't, well, 
it is a devel release anyway. However, do not shorten "packager delay" of 
stable releases.

2) In my option, you have to do RC. Do not underestimate psychological effect 
of RC milestone on all parties involved: developers (no huge changes 
afterwards), packagers (maybe stable enough to give to a greater userbase?) 
and user base/bug reporters (probably I should bother to report this bug or 
2.2 will really be released with it). FWIW, I do not believe in good final 
releases straight from Beta (frankly, your 2.1.0 was like RC rather than final 
release).

3) Two devel versions are simply not enough. Amarok is rather complex and 
featureful so a typical user does not test more than 20-40% of its 
capabilities. So you need a greater set of testers of the recent code base. 
IMHO, three pre-releases (two betas and RC) are fine to incrementally grow 
user base of devel versions.

Therefore, to sum up, I would suggest the following in order to meet your 
ambitious and forced deadline: tag Beta 2 on 14th as scheduled (release a day 
later), then tag RC1 a week later on 21th (release a day later). Finally, tag 
2.2 and release it as planned.

-- 
Modestas Vainius <modestas at vainius.eu>
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