More Plasma bug fix releases

[Martin Graesslin]

On Tuesday, October 27, 2015 6:25:42 AM CET Eric Hameleers wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Oct 2015, Martin Graesslin wrote:
> > Hi distribution maintainers,
> > 
> > I was thinking about the problem of how we can get bug fixes quicker to
> > our
> > user. With a three month release cycle a one-month bug fix cycle sounds
> > too
> > long to me.
> > 
> > So I thought we should make bug fix releases faster and more often. In 5.4
> > we already went for this partially by having the first bug fix earlier. I
> > wanted to know how much work this would mean for our distributions. If we
> > ship out way more bug fix releases, would you be able to work with it?
> > Would it block you? Would you have to skip releases? Or is it just
> > pressing a button to run automatic scripts which upload your packages?
> > 
> > What had I been thinking about? I was thinking about a Fibonacci based
> > release schedule. This gives us quick bug fix releases directly after the
> > release with slowly larger intervals. Of course it would mean tag and
> > release happens on same day.
> > 
> > So a hypothetical release schedule for Plasma 5.5 could look like:
> > * 2015-12-08: 5.5.0
> > * 2015-12-15: 5.5.1
> > * 2015-12-22: 5.5.2
> > * 2016-01-05: 5.5.3
> > * 2016-01-26: 5.5.4
> > (* 2016-03-01: 5.5.5)
> > 
> > Opinions?
> > 
> > Cheers
> > Martin
> 
> I like the idea of getting more visibility for bugfixes that will give
> the enduser a better Plasma experience. Ideal for me would be a patch
> tracker (not the same as a bug tracker) where intermediate patches are
> made available that are scheduled for inclusion in the next release.
> That allows me as a package builder to assimilate those patches if I
> think they can not wait until the next release.

do you have ideas how this could work? Do you know of any existing 
(web)applications to keep track of it? If there is some it should be 
relatively easy to set it up - "just" some git hooks for commits on the stable 
branch.

> 
> I do much more than maintaining the Plasma 5 package set for
> Slackware. So my users get an update once a month, where I incorporate
> the latest Frameworks, Plasma and Applications. It is just not humanly
> possible to do more than that. Internediate patch releases will be
> ignored by me, that is why I hinted at a patch tracker instead.

Ok, thank's for the info. So in that case given the schedule I outlined I 
expect you would go with 5.5.2 or 5.5.3 and skip the previous ones?

Cheers
Martin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 181 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
URL: <http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/release-team/attachments/20151027/8480d35e/attachment.sig>