Re: [cpp-netlib-devel] Release Early, Release Often

[Dean M. B. <mik...@gm...>]

On Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 3:48 PM, Glyn Matthews <gly...@gm...> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> 2008/8/26 Dean Michael Berris <mik...@gm...>
>>
>> Hi Everyone,
>>
>> I've just recently packaged the trunk snapshot revision #72 as
>> cpp-netlib-0.1 -- this does not include the documentation we already
>> have in the docs branch, and will only be available as a very early
>> alpha release.
>
> Cool :)  Is it possible that you could also tag this release in subversion?
> e.g. copy the current trunk to tags/0-1-alpha ?
>

Good idea. :) Let me do that. :D

>>
>> Question to the whole group: would anybody like to manage the release
>> process, and be the "official" release manager? For the meantime I'm
>> willing to take on this task but I imagine with the coding I'm still
>> supposed to do, is anybody willing to take on this responsibility?
>
> If no-one else volunteers, I'll do this.  What work will this mean?  I guess
> its:
>
> Managing trunk to ensure that it's stable;
> When the manager is confident of this, tag and package a release;
> Update the SF & wiki to publicise this
>

Precisely. It's more actually just creating tarballs and zips and
uploading the files to Subversion.

> How often do you expect releases?  You mention that you hope to have 0.2 out
> within a week, but the history of this project shows that weekly releases is
> a bit too ambitious.  But I don't see too much difficulty with an "as and
> when" approach at this early stage.
>

Right. Given that it's still in the flux/alpha state, I want to be
able to ship as early as possible. I mean, since we can run the unit
tests on our machines without having to wait for a lot of turnaround
time, I don't see much point in waiting too long yet. We can keep
releasing 0.2, 0.3, ..., 0.99, until we have a suitably usable 1.0
that we can present at a convention like BoostCon or something
similar. ;)

I imagine not giving much support for released alpha packages, but I
would love to get a package that people can start getting and trying
out or criticizing. Once we've got that critical feedback we need from
users, it's easier to move and come up with a more formal process.
Right now I think having something that works out sooner is better
than not having anything out there yet.

Getting a package out there as well allows us to get users to file
bugs and maybe entice people to actually contribute to the project
too. At least that's the intention. ;)

>> Have a good day everyone, and I hope this helps.
>
> Yes, thanks Dean.

You're welcome. :)

-- 
Dean Michael C. Berris
Software Engineer, Friendster, Inc.