[Jython-dev] Roadmap for Beta 4 and Release Candidate 1 with dates

[Jim B. <jim...@py...>]

With beta 3 of Jython 2.7.0 being completed this week, I believe we are now
ready to consider a roadmap with dates. This roadmap will finally allow us
to have a good answer for this perennial question :)

I would like to propose the following target dates for our last beta and a
release candidate:

*Week of July 21* - Complete beta 4 and start planning Release Candidate 1.
This week was chosen because not only is it 2 months out, it's the week of
EuroPython, which is being held in Berlin. So we should take advantage of
the EuroPython sprints and ability for us to get together face-to-face, as
well as talk with the CPython and PyPy teams, with whom we closely
collaborate. Oti and I are both confirmed for attending, but I would
encourage any other interested contributor to be there too, whether you
have committer status or not. And of course we would love to talk to users
too.

*Week of Sept 22* - Complete Release Candidate 1. This is the week before
JavaOne, and it also gives us 2 months and targets the first week of fall.
This should allow us to have a final release *this year* even if we have to
have another RC.

We have started marking in the bug tracker some issues that we are either
targeting for beta 4 *or* must fix for it. Beta 4 will fix any number of
problems, but at a minimum it will fix our outstanding unit tests (failing
15 out of 357), as well as regrtest stability. Triaging skips will be an
important part of this work.

Fully supporting the standard Python ecosystem is key to a successful
Jython 2.7. Beta 4 will support pip out of the box (via ensurepip),
virtualenv (most likely with venv to minimize overhead and more
flexibility, it requires very minor changes to support), and tox (necessary
for working with projects that have automated cross platform testing).

Beta 4 will also be a feature freeze. Unless we discover a missing critical
feature, we should not add any features after beta 4. Critical features
would be those necessary to support a major Python project (think Django or
SQLAlchemy) or for integration features, especially for the sort of tooling
that we are building in the Jython Tools project (
https://github.com/jythontools/), such as Clamp. Such tools will evolve
separately from Jython core, much as we see in the overall Python
ecosystem. In particular, I would like to see initial work on CFFI being
done this year.

Hank Gay (whg on #jython) and I took advantage of the fact that I was
visiting Atlanta for the OpenStack Summit to do a bit of work on beta 4
planning. Sometime next week I plan to send out a more detailed plan on
jython-dev what Beta 4 should cover including a list of the targeted and
must fix bugs; naturally we need your feedback to make this as
comprehensive as possible, even if it must be necessarily triaged as well.

Release Candidate 1 will focus on eliminating resource leaks, stability,
performance tuning, packaging (anything else?). It would be great to have
feedback especially on how we may want to package with respect to Maven.

Work on Jython 2.7 started just over 3 years ago in earnest. You can see
the commit history at http://hg.python.org/jython. It has been a lot of
work, but we are finally starting to see it come together. I cannot thank
enough our committers, contributors, and users for their branches, patches,
bug reports, emails, and especially patience and support.

- Jim