[Mageia-dev] Release cycles proposals, and discussion

[Maarten Vanraes]

Op dinsdag 14 juni 2011 01:02:51 schreef Michael Scherer:
> Le lundi 13 juin 2011 à 15:51 +0300, Thomas Backlund a écrit :
> > Wolfgang Bornath skrev 13.6.2011 15:20:
> > > About the cycles:
> > > 
> > > The 9-months seem to be a compromise - but I start to ask why we need
> > > such a fixed statement (which it would be, once published). We need a
> > > schedule for each cycle, that's true. Without a schedule we would
> > > never finish anything. But how about taking 9 months only as a "nice
> > > to meet" target, leaving us the option to set a roadmap after setting
> > > the specs of the next release - we could then go for a 8 or 10 months
> > > roadmap, depending on the specs.
> > 
> > This is somewhat like what I had in my mind to write too, but you beat
> > me to it :)
> > 
> > It could allow us to adapt a little for upstream releases.
> > But should we then decide that the limit is +/- 1 month ?
> 
> There is 2 problem :
> - for release of what software ?
> - what if the upstream planning is wrong, and their releases is late
> ( as it happened when I was a trainee in Mandrakesoft, with xfree being
> 3 months late and the distribution still shipping a broken pre release )
> 
> > Obviously there will still be people complaining that "you waited 10
> > months... if you had extended with ~2 more weeks... "this" or "that"
> > package would have been available too... and so on....
> 
> Yes, there will be.
> So let's be realist, 9 months with +/- 1 month is just 10 months +
> people complaining to have 10,5 months.
> 
> We will never use the -1 month, because there will always be something
> worth waiting.

actually, the real reason would be more to plan for whatever features you're 
going to implement and the time it takes to do them. if that's 8 months, it's 
8 months, if that's 9 or 10months, that's what it is.

We proved that we can take a planning and follow it through, even the last 
release_critical one was solved _just_in_time_...

imho, we need to decide now on a sort of 9month period, look at what we're 
going to do, then estimating how long it takes (with enough lenience), then 
make a real planning for that, and stick to it, if features are not ready, 
drop those features for next release, and make sure to fix all the 
release_criticals.