[Squeakfoundation]3.5 release timing (was Re: Outstanding 3.4 bugs?)

[Daniel Vainsencher]

Doug,
You're the Harvest Master, your word is law ;-)

I'll go with whatever you think is best (and I thought of sending this
before you agreed with me, honest! :-). I propose you announce a capsule
decision on squeak-dev when you think the month should start. 

I agree with everything you said. About Accufonts, I think it depends on
what Cees/Andrew can tell us about any discussions with Apple. It might
be worth doing it regardless just to make sure we don't in any way
delay/obstruct any advancement of the license front.

I would really love to know that Andrew and Cees are talking, and we're
getting Andrew's best (non-official) advice about how to go about this.

Daniel

Doug Way <dway at riskmetrics.com> wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday, March 5, 2003, at 09:06 PM, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
> 
> > [about one quick fixes release]
> >
> > Doug said:
> >> That does make some sense.  A "very good" release might be a good 
> >> start
> >> before getting down to splitting up the image and other work, as
> >> opposed to a more average release.  A reference release of sorts.  And
> >> good PR, I suppose.
> >>
> >> It would delay the "getting down to splitting up the image" by at 
> >> least
> >> a month, though.
> > People are posting "Remove <whatever>" packages, though slowly. I think
> > I can help people to speed up and focus this process independent of the
> > release schedule, as long as the fixes made do not break refactorings 
> > by
> > including too many things. So as long as the fixes release is focused 
> > on
> > the important stuff, I see no conflict.
> >
> > When we start 3.6, we'll have a few more removals ready to go.
> 
> Yes, that's true... that work could continue during a short 3.5 bugfix 
> release.
> 
> >> And I'm not sure it's *really* that important.  So
> >> I'm still on the fence, awaiting a few more opinions.
> > Yup, I'd like to hear more too, but keeping in mind that -
> >
> >> But we do need to decide on the 3.5 release timing very soon...
> >
> > Daniel
> 
> Well, I haven't seen any more opinions coming in against the idea of a 
> short bugfix release for 3.5 (although not many in favor have come in 
> either, aside from a few on squeak-dev).
> 
> After thinking about it for awhile, I'm inclined to go along with the 
> idea of a short 3.5 bugfix release.  We'd need to set the release date 
> for about 1 month from now, or perhaps 1 month from when we begin 
> harvesting fixes (which from the looks of it should be very soon).  2 
> weeks alpha, 1 week beta, 1 week gamma, or something like that.
> 
> I'm assuming that future releases (3.6 and beyond) will have a longer, 
> normal release cycle, which would allow enough time for enhancements, 
> refactorings, and package removals, in addition to bugfixes.  Somewhere 
> between 3 and 6 months per release is what has been tossed around, but 
> we don't have to decide that just yet.
> 
> If we do go ahead with this short plan for 3.5, we will need to be 
> strict about letting in only bugfixes, and even then trying to avoid 
> fixes which are overly invasive or widespread.  As an example, the 
> Morphic Cleanup Project stuff seems to be mostly refactorings as 
> opposed to bugfixes.  Very useful refactorings, of course. :-)  But as 
> such, I would think most of that sort of stuff would wait until 
> 3.6alpha to be included.  (Which isn't really *that* far away anyway, 
> and an organized project like MCP would probably warrant consideration 
> for inclusion right at the beginning of 3.6alpha.)
> 
> IMHO, possibly the only non-bugfix item worth considering for 3.5 would 
> be removing the Apple fonts (assuming we decided to go with the simple 
> Accufont solution at first since that's pretty well tested), if we were 
> worried about delaying progress with Apple on the licensing issues.  
> But even that might be a stretch.
> 
> Anyway, my two cents.
> 
> - Doug Way
> 
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