release schedule proposal

[Boudewijn Rempt]

On Monday 07 February 2011, Jaroslaw Staniek wrote:

> Extend the co-installability to the snapshots. What means Calligra not
> only can be co-installable with the GroupA-Office but also with the
> latest (or any) stable Calligra release. I see value in this and the
> effort at the side of packagers would be decreased.
> Technical means for this would be using either directory prefixes or
> file name prefixes.

It will be a lot of work... I don't see the value of it, especially if it means we need to do something to every snapshot. I want to get these snapshots out as soon as possible, with minimal effort that detracts from development.

> 
> Without this effort, we cannot expect many _real_ users of Calligra
> will test the snapshots: not everyone compiles by hand. And I see that
> many valuable testers won't. To move to the next level[tm] we could
> let users running the existing Calligra apps while _completely_
> independently testing the snapshot.

I expect distributions to package the snapshots and mark them as non-coinstallable with KOffice. Packaging isn't such a big job anymore, and their users will ask for the packages, if we get our publicity done. (Which we really suck at at the moment).

And once we have calligra in a state where we'll stop doing snapshots.

> A variant of this would be to find contributors (inside/outside) and
> provide unofficial repos for the packages that are co-installable.
> Then only the stable/beta/rc packages would be distributed using the
> standard channels. For example opensuse fanatics could use the suse's
> build facilities to deliver the snapshots.
> 
> I am not saying all or any of this is feasible with the current
> resources, since many of us would need to contribute...
> Looking forward to see what you think...

I really think it's not worth doing -- I don't care about co-installability with Thomas's project or KOffice 2.3.x and every new snapshot is an upgrade to the previous one, and the first real release an upgrade to the last snapshot.

It's a temporary system until we get the main apps good enough for users. And that's what we should focus on. Since I learned last week that it's not just Words that shouldn't be inflicted on anybody who wants to be productive...

-- 
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org, http://www.krita.org