[etoys-dev] etoys 5 releases

[Timothy Falconer]

Hi everyone,

Until we have more developers, let's stick to one public release per  
year, at least for Etoys 5.   Remember, we cannot rely on Bert,  
Yoshiki, and Scott after New Year's.

As for developer releases, we can be more regular ... and we can  
encourage people to use alpha/beta releases, which will help with our  
testing.

To get into a regular rhythm, let's do installer builds on the first  
of each month, if there's enough change to warrant it (decided at dev  
meet).

We could call the developer builds .... Etoys 5 alpha 1, Etoys 5 alpha  
2, etc, or 5a1, 5a2.   When we reach "brave user" level stability, we  
switch to Etoys 5 beta 1, etc, or 5b1.

In other words .... to the community, alpha means "risky, you will  
find bugs",  beta means "please test personally" .... final means,  
"use in your classrooms."


Here's a potential release cycle:

Dec 1st ... Etoys 5 alpha 1 ... includes Dr Geo, with update stream &  
build on skylab

Jan 1st ... Etoys 5 alpha 2 ... riskiest changes first

Feb 1st ... Etoys 5 alpha 3 ... debatable UI changes

Mar 1st ... Etoys 5 alpha 4 ... last iffy build

Apr 1st ... Etoys 5 beta 1 ... community review of UI and new features

May 1st ... Etoys 5 beta 2 ... includes community suggestions

June 1st ... Etoys 5 release candidate ... code freeze

June 21st ...  Etoys 5 final ... nothing but criticals and blockers


This means we need to "get the hood down" partially for the first four  
releases, and completely for the next three.


Thoughts?

Tim