[squeak-dev] 4.4 release plan

Frank Shearar frank.shearar at gmail.com
Thu Aug 2 10:05:29 UTC 2012


Hi,

We've had a sharp uptick in the rate of development recently, and I
thought it worthwhile to talk about how this might go forward.

I'd originally wanted Environments in 4.4 because I like new features
in versions, rather than (and my perception might be completely wrong)
lots of bugfixes [1].

In talking to Colin, that was a tad optimistic, given that Chris
Cunnington and I were talking about a September release.

Since I'd like to increase the perceived momentum of Squeak, I'd thus
rather release 4.4 now than wait for us to hammer on Environments.
Colin reckons he'd like to adjust Environments over the next few
months. Given the invasiveness of the change (even if it has had very
little impact so far), that seems like a good plan. Solid release,
good. Flaky release, bad.

So, the plan right now is
* unwind Environments
* move 4.4 into beta
* get a green light on all tests (that we expect to work now)
(* ideally test a bunch of well-known packages against 4.4 on squeakci)
* release 4.4 on September 1.

I don't know if that means we should simply fork 4.4 backdated
immediately prior to Environments landing or not: if that's possible,
that might be easier than unwinding. I would ask, though, that people
concentrate on hammering the 4.4 beta stream then, rather than
hammering on trunk, until September.

frank

[1] At some point I'll do the hard graft of formalising these
features/fixes into a changelog.


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