Possible goals for future releases (was: Re: Let's Release 3. 4)

Tim Rowledge tim at sumeru.stanford.edu
Sat Mar 1 19:13:42 UTC 2003


Hannes Hirzel <hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch> wrote:

> release cycle - 10 days alpha - 10 days beta 10 days gamma) and then
> switch to your proposition of quaterly releases?
Not Enough Time To Do Anything.

Alpha is time when you start working on new features to get them to a
level where you can at least demonstrate the idea to knowledgeable
people and have some chance that it will work enough to be convincing.

Beta is started when you have _everything_  working well enough that it
is not a waste of other peoples' time to try it out and help in finding
bugs. Beta lasts until it seems that all worrying bugs are fixed _and_
retested.

Gamma is a hopefully short period where you devoutly hope that no killer
bugs turn up to ruin your life. You do not release until you feel sure
that it is acceptable.

10 days is not enough time for a gamma stage, let alone beta. Alpha
takes as long as it takes to get to beta. One might possibly claim that
we have enough stuff ready to start trying to consider alpha for a very
minor release but that still means assembling a test release, getting a
good number of people to try it etc.

tim

-- 
Tim Rowledge, tim at sumeru.stanford.edu, http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim
Useful random insult:- Gyros are loose.



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