[ros-dev] Discussion: Release policy changes

[Ged Murphy]

Timo Kreuzer wrote:
> I also think t would be good to release more often and with the new 
> regression testing in place it might be possible to do a monthly 
> release. But please keep in mind that releasing is always time 
> consuming and there should be a clear definition of when a release 
> should be done and what keeps a release to not be submitted.
>
> Some suggestions:

I think you missed the whole point of changing the release system.

Releasing shouldn't be time consuming, as Alekseys first email said
  "Release happens on a strict time basis, like once per month. That 
  means, at the end of the month we look for the best revision inside
  this month (probably which is closer to the end of the month), branch
  from it, apply all fixes (if any), and release."


Lets look at Wine's release process, every few weeks Julliard takes a 
snapshot of the source, builds it and makes both available online as a 
0.9.* release
A quick news article is normally written shortly after detailing the 
main changes (not every single change, this is unessesary).
Granted, Wine releases are generally very stable, but Wine are in Beta, 
currently sitting 1 major increment from the version 1 release.
We are at 0.3, currently 7 increments from a version 1 release. We are 
in Alpha, we don't need to worry too much about perfectly polished 
releases, that can be saved from the major releases (i.e. 3.0, 4.0, 5.0)

Our main interest is getting releases out as often as possible, and with 
as little effort as possible. Our releases are never going to be 
completely bug free at this stage, but I personally don't see that as a 
bad thing. 90% of patches we've accepted recently have been bug fixes, 
not new features. It seems to me that bugs are attracting devs.

It will happen on occasions that a release finds it's way out with a 
relatively serious bug which has been missed. This would be picked up by 
end users testing the releases. Again, I don't see a massive problem 
with this, the bug can be quickly fixed and a new release put out 
straight after with a little news article letting people know what is 
going on.
This might mean that we end up with things like 0.3.57, but is this 
really so bad? I quite like the idea of it. This isn't a web browser or 
text editor, it's a full operating system. 57 minor increments sounds 
entirely reasonable to me.

If it makes people happier, a note could be placed on the 'Download Now' 
area stating that ROS is incomplete, these releases are snapshots and to 
expect some bugs.

Ged.