Release Plan

Andreas Pakulat apaku at gmx.de
Mon Oct 20 20:34:59 UTC 2008


On 20.10.08 15:13:06, Matt Rogers wrote:
> On Monday 20 October 2008 10:58:21 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > On 20.10.08 10:30:13, Matt Rogers wrote:
> > > So if we've started a feature, we don't get time to finish it? That's not
> > > even how the KDE release schedule works.
> >
> > Actually, it works exactly like that. The Soft Feature Freeze starts with
> > the first Alpha-Release, i.e. tomorrow. From that time on, no new feature
> > can be started. Then at some point there's the first beta, at that point in
> > time your feature must be complete, it may contain bugs, but the
> > functionality needs to be there - or it needs to be removed again until
> > trunk is unfrozen.
> 
> That's an oversimplification. After the KDE soft feature freeze, the feature 
> list is frozen and only new features that are on the feature list can be 
> added.

Last I heard thats not true, features that haven't been started before the
soft freeze are not allowed to be part of the release. I can't check
techbase right now wether its written down there and I'm too lazy to dig
through the release team list, because its irrelevant anyway, see below.

> You can still add new features, as long as they're on the list. When 
> the hard feature freeze hit, then there's no features that can be started but 
> those that are already present can be bugfixed.

There's a difference between bugfixing a feature and having it implemented
only 10%. Nobody is arguing against putting the final touches on a working
feature. The important part here is _working_, that is the functionality
must be usable - with whatever restrictions there are due to still existing
bugs.
 
> > > If you start new features before the hard
> > > feature freeze, then we should have the opportunity to finish/bugfix the
> > > features, IMO.
> >
> > Bugfixing can always be done, apart from that as I said the Hard Feature
> > freeze and hence the Beta1 will be announced early enough. So this won't
> > actually be a problem. The point in time when this is announced is our soft
> > feature freeze, from that point on no new feature may be started in either
> > of the modules, only the already started ones may be finished. Same thing
> > as with the KDE release cycle, except that our plan isn't as long-term as
> > the KDE one. We can always talk about the time-frame between announcing the
> > Beta1 tagging date/hard feature freeze and the actual date of the tagging
> > (i.e. 4 weeks in advance or 6, probably not more as that would be too much)
> 
> Personally, I think we should follow the exact same steps that the main KDE 
> modules do, some of which I've clarified above. 

As I said, I think we do. In particular if we're strict we already are in
soft-feature freeze since we released the first alpha. However I don't see
this as useful, because we're not sure yet when our hard feature freeze
happens (i.e. beta1). So all I was saying is that the hard feature freeze
will be announced early enough and also only after all the basic needed
features have at least been started.
 
> > > > So thats what my plans are currently, anybody who has different
> > > > opinions/suggestions feel free to speak up.
> > >
> > > We can always keep releasing alpha snapshots until we're comfortable.
> >
> > Of course we will do that, I wasn't putting any hard dates so far, however
> > I think we all need to concentrate more on getting the stuff done thats
> > needed for the initial 4.0 release, instead of indefinetly pushing out
> > alpha's that are rc's in some parts and pre-alpha's in other parts.
> 
> And that is what? 

See the feature plan in the wiki. Not all of them might be needed (I've
written the page about half a year ago when my plans were maybe a bit more
ambitious :).

So far nobody else really cares about that stuff. I'm going to move those
things into bugzilla in 1-2 weeks (going to SF on the weekend so not much
time this weekend) as I've now created milestones for the initial releases
which makes tracking the things a bit easier - especially whats done and
what needs to be done for the release.

Andreas

-- 
You are taking yourself far too seriously.




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