How to promote less mature Frameworks?

[David Faure]

On Friday 15 August 2014 12:51:58 Kevin Ottens wrote:
> On Friday 15 August 2014 09:34:04 Alex Merry wrote:
> > On Friday 15 August 2014 10:21:57 Mark Gaiser wrote:
> > > On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 12:12 AM, Àlex Fiestas <afiestas at kde.org> wrote:
> > > > Hi there
> > > > 
> > > > At the Randa sprint we have discussed a little bit what to do with
> > > > those
> > > > frameworks that are still not mature (for example they can't commit on
> > > > ABI/API stability) but they are ready for feedback from third party
> > > > developers.
> > > > 
> > > > Even though there was not consensus in the discussion this is an idea
> > > > that
> > > > came out during the discussion:
> > > > 
> > > > -We introduce a Maturity level that we can use to manage expectations
> > > > about
> > > > the Framework (for example whether API/ABI will be kept)
> > > > -We release Frameworks that are not ready together with the rest, but
> > > > we
> > > > have to make damn sure we manage expectations.
> > > > 
> > > > With this we can get early feedback for new frameworks, and since we
> > > > have
> > > > a
> > > > rapid release cycle we can improve them fast.
> > > > 
> > > > What do you think?
> > > 
> > > It depends on how you define maturity.
> > > 
> > > For instance, if a maturity is simply a value set in each project'
> > > metainfo.yaml and set by those that maintain it then the maturity
> > > level quite frankly doesn't tell you anything.
> > > 
> > > But if you decide maturity dynamically based on git activity, api/abi
> > > stability, number of people contributing and where the project itself
> > > is used in other projects (just some conditions that i can think of
> > > now, there is probably more). With this a project maturity actually
> > > has a meaning. When going for this approach it would also be nice to
> > > show a list of projects using "Framework X". Also, i do not consider a
> > > project being healthy when it has only one developer [1] even if the
> > > project is used by dozens of other projects and has much activity. For
> > > us - kde devs - we probably don't care much if a framework is being
> > > developed/maintained by one person, but for external potential
> > > framework users that will be a concern. Specially companies.
> > 
> > I think you're talking less about "maturity" and more about "vitality", or
> > something. Anyway, naming aside, I think Àlex was talking specifically
> > about API/ABI guarantees - we offer pretty strong guarantees, and fresh
> > projects may not want to commit to that until they've had some real-world
> > usage and feedback. This would allow the equivalent to kdelibs' old
> > "experimental" tagging, which was used for a couple of libraries while
> > they settled on an API.
> > 
> > I think it could be useful, but would definitely require very careful
> > communication.
> 
> And that's the problem if we release them. If it's released "with the rest"
> expect people to have wrong expectations about them.
> 
> A possibility would be perhaps to produce nightly tarballs for those
> frameworks which don't have the "release: true" flag. This way they keep not
> being part of a release, and early adopters have something easy to grab.

Wouldn't early adopters just checkout and build from git ?

I don't know about you, but I almost never download a source tarball, because 
a git checkout is just so much easier to update later.
We mostly make tarballs for packagers, and the non-mature frameworks we're 
talking about should definitely NOT be packaged.

IMHO the solution is just to publicize the upcoming frameworks somewhere.

-- 
David Faure, faure at kde.org, http://www.davidfaure.fr
Working on KDE Frameworks 5