Re: [Statcvs-users] Release early and often?

[Jukka U. <juk...@dn...>]

Richard Cyganiak kirjoitti:
> 
> What do you think? How should an open source release process for a 
> project like StatCVS work? Both developer's and user's point of views 
> are welcome.
> 

Hi,

This is pretty intresting question. I think it is good idea to make time 
between releases so short as possible, but not shorter than possible. I
mean if you have certain process, it will take certain time and if you 
try to make it faster, you don't follow your process. Only way is 
improve your process. And now we discussing how to improve statcvs 
release process.

How about process as follows:

1. Decide what new features are in next release

2. Provide nightly-build. Nightly-build is released from cvs head branch 
if there are any changes in cvs, code gets compiled and passes unit tests.

3. When all features in next release are implemented, provide 
release-candidate. This point there should be branch in cvs for release-
candidate bugfixes. Propably you will need couple of release-candidates.

4. When you think release-candidate is stable enough, just release 
official release or maybe uses take a vote, but propably everybody will 
use some release candidate as production at this point.

Nighly-builds requires automated build system and good enough unit test
cases. Do you have checked coverage of unit tests?

Like Martin says good test suite is important thing, but i assume that
application like statcvs, good unit test suite has most effort for 
testing. There are no user interactions etc, which are hard to test with
junit.

In open source projects, tight schedules aren't critical issue. People 
are voluntarily working and everybody has possibility to contribute to 
get releases ready earlier.

- Jukka -