[Mageia-dev] Release cycles proposals, and discussion

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op zondag 12 juni 2011 23:38:48 schreef Angelo Naselli:
> In data domenica 12 giugno 2011 22:46:33, Michael Scherer ha scritto:
> > Proposal 1:
> > 6 months release cycle -> 12 months life cycle
> > ( Fedora, Ubuntu, Mandriva < 2010.1 && Mandriva != 2006.0 )
> > 
> > Proposal 2:
> > 9 months release cycle -> 18 months life cycle
> > ( ~ opensuse and the one we used for Mageia 1 )
> > 
> > Proposal 3:
> > 12 months release cycle -> 24 months life cycle
> > ( Mandriva > 2010.1 )
> 
> Well imo extending too much release cycle means also to
> have a lot of backports and patches for fixings.
> 
> So 1 or 2 are better, more upstream packages than fixings.
> 
> If we cannot afford 6 mo release cycle because we're all volunteers for
> instance, 9 mo one is the right compromise, i believe.
> 
> Cheers,

+1

allthough, _perhaps_ there is another option: (i didn't think about the effect 
this would have on life cycles):

i was thinking, that maybe we want 9months now, because of big changes coming, 
but maybe in the future we would do less big changes for instance.

Proposal 4:
JIT-fixed months release cycle -> ? months life cycle

explanation:
the idea is to have the following things happen after release:
1. postmortem
2. discussion of features
3. decision of features
4. making planning and deciding time based on the featurelist and an educated 
guess on time required to implement and bugfix. (generally between 6 and 12 
months)
....

pro:
 - allows to plan release taking into account everything:
    - list of features to be done (and amount of packagers)
    - holidays
    - releases of other distros
    - stuff i hadn't thought of

con:
 - there could be a pitfall that we ALWAYS don't fulfill the planning
 - unknown months life cycle


in general, it would mean, what we do right now, there's a separate decision 
every time.

thinking specifically on this time:
 - 8months: 1st febr, bad idea: because of christmas holidays there will 
likely be no good testing.
 - 9months is 1st march? (sounds like a busy time for other distros)
 - 10months:  1st april (april fools joke? not good)

I'm thinking 10,5 months for this one: April 15th. perhaps next time most big 
changes will be done, and we could go for a short 6 or 7month release if we 
have more resources at that time.

just my personal opinion,

Maarten