[Vm-dev] [Vm-team] New VM builds to support Squeak 4.1 release (was: [squeak-dev] 4.1 release tasks)

[David T. Lewis]

Ian, John, Andreas:

To support the upcoming Squeak 4.1 release (relicensed Squeak plus
subsequent trunk development), we would like to provide updated VMs
for all platforms over the next two weeks (target April 4 for completion).

The purpose of this message is to start a thread on vm-dev to drive
completion of the "Ensure current VMs" task from Andreas' task list,
see below.

I'm not sure that I'm entirely up to speed on our open issues (sorry),
but I think that the following needs to be done:

- Merge and adopt John's 64-bit and iPhone changes (John, need guidance
  as to specific things we need to include for 4.1).

- Complete the SoundPlugin patches for 64-bit (or I will roll back the
  VMMaker patches until a later date if this cannot be easily completed).

- Updates to support John's microsecond timer changes for profiling.

- Review open Mantis issues for critical open concerns (my responsibility).

- If possible, include FT2Plugin in builds (important for Pharo folks,
  not essential for Squeak 4.1 support).

- Do the builds.

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 11:11:24PM -0700, John M McIntosh wrote:
>
> On 2010-03-17, at 8:28 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>
> > [ ] Ensure current VMs
> > What: Ensure that all platforms have current VMs available, with all required fixes applied.
> > Who: VM maintainers
> > When: April 4th
>
> To do this I'll need some help folding the 64bit changes from macintosh squeak 5.x and the iphone port back into the tree

John, let me know how and if I can help. Given the short timeline, we
should focus on essential changes that should be supported also by
win32 and unix. I'm not clear on which things are needed in the near
term.

For reference, the Squeak 4.1 release tasks thread is here:
  http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2010-March/147166.html

And Andreas' original posting is repeated below:

On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 08:28:56PM -0700, Andreas Raab wrote:
> Folks -
> 
> As stated in the previous message, here is a thread to gather release 
> tasks and the time frame in which they should be addressed. I'm taking 
> the "4 weeks to release" rather literally below because I want to avoid 
> excessive discussions about what we should do with feature x or y. 
> Rather, I'm saying let's ship it as it is, get it out quickly, and spend 
> our time moving forward from there. With that said, here we go:
> 
> [ ] Build a 4.1alpha trunk image
> What: We need to re-apply all the changes that went into trunk on top of 
> 4.0 to create a proper 4.1 alpha. I'm planning to do this by the weekend 
> and remove the previous trunk images since they're now obsolete.
> Who: Andreas
> When: March 20th
> 
> [ ] Feature Freeze trunk
> What: Feature freeze the trunk. Only fixes for identified issues go in.
> Who: All core-devs.
> When: March 28th
> 
> (this gives us one more week if you have anything that you feel strongly 
> about)
> 
> [ ] Make tests green
> What: Review all the tests on all platform; identify failing tests, make 
> them pass or document known failures.
> Who: ???
> When: April 4th (this is a bit of wishful thinking...)
> 
> [ ] Ensure current VMs
> What: Ensure that all platforms have current VMs available, with all 
> required fixes applied.
> Who: VM maintainers
> When: April 4th
> 
> [ ] Create a 4.1 release repository on source.squeak.org
> What: Create a release repository that we can point the release image to 
> for subsequent 4.1 maintenance updates.
> Who: Any source.squeak.org admin
> When: ASAP.
> 
> [ ] Identify Mantis bugs that should be in 4.1
> What: Categorize bugs that need to be looked at for the 4.1 release 
> (does NOT imply fixing the bugs)
> Who: Everyone.
> When: April 4th.
> 
> [ ] Build release candidates
> What: Start building release candidates to ensure we have a process. 
> Casey probably still has a few make files around.
> Who: ???
> When: Ongoing.
> 
> [ ] Write welcome message, press release
> What: Write a welcome message, overview of changes, press release etc.
> Who: ???
> When: April 4th.
> 
> As a time line we get:
> 
> ASAP:
> - Create 4.1 release repository
> 
> March 20th:
> - Build a 4.1alpha trunk image
> 
> March 28th:
> - Feature Freeze
> - RC1 build
> 
> April 4th:
> - Green tests
> - Updated VMs
> - Mantis bugs organized
> - Welcome message, press release
> - RC2 build
> 
> April 11th:
> - All bugs fixed (yeah, right :-)
> - RC3 build
> 
> April 17th:
> - Ship date
> 
> This is obviously a tight schedule but if we want to get the puppy out 
> in four weeks we need to get schtuff done. I don't think it's 
> unreasonable though; all the tasks are doable on their own, we just need 
> a few people to step up and pick one they can help with.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas