[Squeakfoundation]Shepherding large enhancements

[Doug Way]

Sorry about finally catching up with this now... it's a bit of a 
struggle to keep up with the lists, and incorporating stuff, and trying 
to get update-broadcasting to work again.  (I haven't made much 
progress on this last item, but publishing updates by copying files to 
the ftp site myself is not all that bad, and actually somewhat faster 
if it's a large batch, so I'll probably just do that for a while.)

On Wednesday, June 25, 2003, at 10:46 AM, goran.krampe at bluefish.se 
wrote:

> ...
>> I think we should release this weekend what we already have finished 
>> and
>> reviewed, and see if someone can help along what didn't get ready, so
>> they get in early in 3.7.
>
> When you say "release" this weekend, what do you mean by that? Doug 
> said
> "go to beta". I assume Doug means to follow the original plan, I quote:
>
>> The release date for 3.6 final is August 1st, in keeping with the
>> 4-month release cycle idea, and the first-Friday release date within
>> the month.  Beta/Gamma dates haven't been discussed, but I would
>> propose having the gamma release 2 weeks before final, and the beta 4
>> weeks before the gamma.  (If a big problem comes up during gamma, the
>> release would be postponed by 2 weeks.)
>
> AFAICT from all this we are "kindof" doing ok. To me it seems like
> people would be much happier overall if we could squeeze these in 
> before
> going to beta - since "beta" implies all new features present:
>
> 1. TrueType. I haven't followed the last discussion, but Yoshiki did do
> a new release?
> 2. Diego's look style enhancements. Ready to go in?
> 3. Simulator fixes (someone picked that ball up, right?)
>
> The replacing of the fonts hasn't been much discussed so I assume it
> could be postponed.
>
> So... if we simply slide the "going to beta" a few days, say...
> somewhere middle next week, 2nd july? That sounds like it could buy us 
> a
> few days to wrap up the three above. Doug of course has the last word.

Yes, I'd agree with this as a sort of compromise.  We are starting to 
cheat here a bit by pushing back the beta date but not the final 
release date, but I don't think we're at a dangerous point yet.  So, 
let's go with July 2nd.

> Personally I think it is very important that the community stands 
> behind
> the release - and there *really* has been pressure about at least
> TrueType and Diego's stuff so I think we should try our utmost to
> accomodate that. I really do.

Yes.  There was discussion about which has more priority for 
releases... the Date or Features, and we more or less agreed to give 
Date priority.  I interpret this to mean that Date is most important, 
but Features are not completely unimportant.  In other words, if we've 
only completed 4 out of 11 features as we approach a beta date, we 
might consider postponing the date.  But if we've completed most 
features (say, 8 or more), the date stays.  We definitely don't want to 
postpone dates until all features are completed... the list of features 
is really more of a goal than a strict requirement.  For example, at 
this point I could imagine that waiting to get closures in might delay 
things by up to several months, if we wanted to completely resolve 
licensing issues and all other issues.

My example above of when to consider postponing a release is sort of 
fuzzy... Daniel's description in an earlier post is a bit more 
objective.

> Finally I come to SM1.1. My life is a bit hectic this week. :-) As
> always of course, but this week is a bit more. We will have our wedding
> party on saturday and THEN my vacation begins which means I will be 
> able
> to push on SM1.1 for real.
>
> Personally I think that SM doesn't *really* need to follow the rules of
> "beta"/"gamma" as strictly because it is in many ways a tool built "on
> top" of Squeak and not as much BEING Squeak itself. This can of course
> be discussed. :-)

I've been assuming that SM1.1 wouldn't necessarily be incorporated in 
the 3.6 final image... just that it would be available by the time 3.6 
was released.  So it doesn't need to be ready by beta.

Maybe set a goal for yourself to get it done by sometime in mid-July, 
even if it is a bit buggy. :-)

> Anyway, I am committed to it and I really want to deliver SM1.1. I also
> think it is needed to be deployed *before* we get into 3.7. Why? 
> Because
> otherwise we will start breaking 3.6 when moving forward with 3.7 - the
> lack of releases will have that effect.
>
> In practice this means that SM1.1 needs to get in place before we start
> releasing new versions of the packages that are now being introduced in
> 3.6 (the ones being a part of official Squeak like for example Scamper,
> Celeste etc). Exactly what this means to our cycle I am not sure - I 
> can
> only say that I will be working hard on it and that we will deliver
> (Brian has done a great job of implementing a proper cache etc), I just
> can't promise *when*.
>
> Ok, now I hope this post can spur a productive creative discussion
> instead of people "moaning and bitching" about how the process is
> moving. ;-) ;-) <- Note plenty of smileys here.
>
> We are all in this together and learning as we go. Personally I am 
> proud
> of all of us doing such a great job sofar. Marcus, Daniel, Doug and
> Brent has really gotten the harvesting going for example (sorry if I
> missed any names here).
>
> As Marcus (I think) said - this is meant to be fun! Let's keep it that.
>
> regards, Göran
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