On 8/20/06, Cees De Groot <cdegroot at gmail.com> wrote:
>  shouldn't we have some sort of simple round
> of ideas where people can propose "I'll pull 3.10 and do it in such
> and such a way". Or 4.0, or whatever.

This is an excellent idea!  There shoudl be a round of proposals with
discussion on the proposals, followed by a vote.  Someone needs to be
in charge of the process.  So, perhaps a month before the current
release is finished, this person would call for proposals and oversee
the vote.   The board should probably do this.

> For example, I would say: I'll pull 3.10 and will do it as follows:
> - 3.10 will be a maintenance release in the 3.x series - the goal is
> to have no incompatible surprises against 3.9 on the language/vm
> level;
> - 3.10 will be released on April 1st (6 months away. Ok, April 2nd ;-));
> - The full image will comprise any package in 3.9 that a) runs all its
> unit tests, b) comes from an MC repository, c) has a maintainer
> (person or group) and d) is automatically loadable and unloadable.
> Additional packages may be added at my discretion;
> - The base image will be a minimal subset of the full image;
> - I will unilaterally add stuff to MC to facilitate the process
> (pre/postscripts, etcetera) if necessary;
> - I will provide a daily build for upstream maintainers to test their
> packages against.
> - I will not touch, not even with a very long stick, any upstream
> code. Code integrates or not, code that doesn't integrate is out. If
> that means that 3.10 doesn't have Morphic and MVC and whatnot, so be
> it.

What about bug fixes to the base image?  These don't seem to be
covered by this proposal.

Also, I think six months is too long.  My guess is that there will be
both revolutionary and non-revolutionary proposals.  The
revolutionaries will use this date as a deadline to get a
demonstration of their system ready and it is better to have those
dates more than twice a year.  Jan 2 would be a better date.

-Ralph