[wx-dev] [all] 2.7.0 and releases organization in general

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Sun, 06 Aug 2006 00:12:41 +0300 Mart Raudsepp <leio at dustbite.net> wrote:

MR> In my opinion it doesn't convey the problem of using the version in
MR> production yet very well. 

 I don't want to frighten people more than necessary. I've heard too many
times, especially during the very long period between 2.4 and 2.6, that 2.5
couldn't be used at all because it was unstable -- while it wasn't really,
it was just incompatible.

MR> "This is a technology preview release out of a series of many towards
MR> the way of a stable more feature-rich 2.8 production release. There are
MR> no API nor ABI compatibility assurances for the 2.7.0 release compared
MR> to the 2.6 series or the upcoming releases in the development cycle.
MR> However, we'd like you to test it out and let us know of problems and
MR> wishes through our bugs and feature request trackers. We do not advise
MR> to use this version of the framework in production."

 I wouldn't put this. It's clear that some (long) time will pass before 2.8
is available and I'm sure people will want and need use things like wxAUI
and wxRichTextCtrl before then. I think it's quite possible to use 2.7 in
production, you just need to freeze the version you use -- you definitely
can't allow following cvs HEAD as you could, in principle, follow 2.6
branch (even though it would be more prudent to freeze the version you use
even on 2.6).

MR> We seem to treat the terms "framework" and "toolkit" interchangeably at
MR> some places. I'm not sure if this won't cause any confusion. I think we
MR> should try to stick to the framework term? The title is for example
MR> saying it's a toolkit, for example.

 IMHO they're interchangeable and using a word like "framework" which
hardly rolls from the tongue everywhere wouldn't improve the text
readability... but to be honest I don't care that much.

MR> We might want to find more new stuff to mention in the release
MR> announcement, but only if it's significant. The time span from branching
MR> has been long, so the expectation is to have lots of stuff.

 I tried to be as short as possible but we could add dozens of more items
there. I'm not sure if people are going to read all this in the release
announcement though. My guess is that people really interested in it would
read the entire change log anyhow (BTW, I've added a link to it to the docs
section of the web site at http://www.wxwidgets.org/docs/)

MR> Did you say we will be able to grab automatically generated tarballs
MR> (how to deal with CVS tagging then?)

 I've just tagged the current cvs with WX_2_7_0 (after reading Chris'
mail). We can move the tag if any files have to be changed though.

MR> or it's more than generating the deb and rpm's, which should not
MR> be a pre-requirement for a release to happen?

 It's not a pre-requirement but it's certainly better if it does work (and
the RPMs didn't until this week-end and DEBs didn't before Robin fixed
them).

MR> Has any testing of the HEAD code been undertaken recently?

 Well, I did do some testing but mainly there haven't been that many
changes recently to begin with so I hope nothing got seriously broken.


MR> Can we say nothing this bad is still in there?

 I'd surely prefer if there were more testing but there isn't and I don't
know where is it going to come from. At least right now things are, as I
said, reasonably stable. Anyhow, I think that if took this point of view
("can we be sure everything is perfect") we'd never release anything at
all.

MR>  so I can take your word for it, but would prefer to do some tests on
MR>  wxGTK in the morning/afternoon.

 Sure, this would be very welcome! I'll be online tomorrow so please report
any problems here and we'll [try to] fix them.

MR> Over-all, I think that if delaying the release now would mean a long
MR> delay, and nothing bad creeps up, then we should do it.

 This is my motivation as well.

MR> * Is Julian away on a vacation kind of thing? I didn't find any
MR> references in the mailing list.

 He had warned in a message to the list some time ago that he was occupied
by family matters and he obviously doesn't have much time for wx right now.

MR> * It was plural "releases". Does that mean more than 2.7.0 release?

 No, I'm afraid just a typo. I didn't plan to do 2.6.4 right now although I
agree that it could be a good idea. OTOH looking at the changes file, there
doesn't seem to be that many changes. And there does seem to be many
changes which could be back ported to 2.6 but were not so it would probably
make sense to do it first.

MR> * Are you now going to do 2.7.0 on your own after looking for a
MR> volunteer? I have nothing against that, unless we will have a situation
MR> where every next release is done by someone else.

 So far it looks like (please correct me if I'm wrong):

1. Chris is going to run the build scripts to generate everything and
   upload it to York FTP and SF

2. Kevin O. is going to update the web site

3. I'm going to regenerate Ubuntu packages once again and post the
   announcement mail. Also maybe upload the SRPM.

Is there anything I forgot?

 If not, then it seems the main work is going to be done by Chris and Kevin
finally (which is great for me) and I'd be happy to delegate (3) if anybody
wants to do it. The Ubuntu packages part is, as you rightly noticed,
optional but I want to do it anyhow if only for my own usage.

MR> * What is required to actually do the release?

 The above is my attempt at summarizing it. We do have docs/tech/tn0013.txt
but it's wxGTK-specific, we probably need a more global document too.

MR> PS: It might be a good time to announce to this list that I have
MR> recently become the official maintainer of wxWidgets, wxPython and some
MR> applications and libraries based on wxWidgets in Gentoo Linux.

 Good news and congratulations! Maybe we should mention this somewhere on
the web site too?

 Regards,
VZ