Observations and personal conclusions on the KDE release process since 4.0

[Maciej Mrozowski]

On Wednesday 30 of June 2010 20:23:18 Simon Edwards wrote:

> The main issues for this cycle, IMHO, have been:

> * branches - Things being branched off earlier than expected, or work
> branches being merged later in the process make it harder to keep track
> of what exactly is going to be in 4.5.

My thoughts exactly. But it's not only that.
Why do you guys branch off before minor release? (4.x.0).  Time between rc1 
and release is important as important fixes usually are commited in this 
period. And while trunk and recently branched off code doesn't really differ 
much, any fixes *have* *to* be applied to both branches, otherwise trunk will 
be affected again. And while back/forward porting fixes is troublesome I 
suppose some fixed simply don't make it to both branches (forgotten, people 
being unaware of the need to fix both branches etc).

Branching off relatively late (maybe even after minor release, not tagging, 
just in any case) would also (hopefully) mean a little shift towards 
"maintenance" from "new features" seemingly forcing developers to focus on 
polishing not-yet-released version instead of "working in trunk".
(which I believe may upset many developers and they'll choose to work in 
playground/local branches nevertheless).

-- 
regards
MM