[darcs-users] darcs 1.0.6 release

[zooko at zooko.com]

 Tommy Pettersson wrote:
>
> On Tue, Feb 28, 2006 at 09:13:35PM -0800, Jason Dagit wrote:
> > Perhaps we could even do something like once every X months there is a
> > feature freeze.  During the feature freeze the unstable repo is handed
> > to Tommy for Y days (or weeks) where only bug fixes are accepted in
> > Tommy's version.  When the Y days are over he releases it to the
> > world.  Meanwhile, the unstable branch has its middle version number
> > incremented when the freeze starts and continues to accept features.

+1

> I haven't felt any need for a more complicated release mechanism
> than pulling stuff into stable by good judgement and start a new
> release when it feels appropriate. But I may be missing the
> point.

Hopefully it doesn't need to be more complicated, but there are a few things
that could be different.

1.  You could make sure to start a new release branch on a regular schedule,
    e.g. every three months.

1a. You could announce what that schedule is so that other people can plan
    around it.

2.  You could make sure to apply *only* bugfixes to the release branch.  If
    there are sweet and juicy features that people might want but which aren't
    bugfixes, then that's fine -- those people can get the unstable version.

2a. You could announce that this is the policy so that people can plan around
    it.  It might already *be* your policy -- I'm not sure.

3.  You could make sure to maintain the release branch for Y days before
    tagging it as a release.

3a. You could announce this policy etc.

4.  You could increment the minor version number on the trunk every time you
    make a release branch.

This way I, as a consumer of darcs, would have a lot more reliable information
to plan around:

 * I would know that a new stable, tested, release of darcs is going to come
   out within about X months.

 * I would know that if I am using darcs version 1.a.b that I can upgrade to
   darcs version 1.a.b+e and get no interface changes, no added features, no
   performance improvements, only bugfixes.


I'd like to know what you think of this idea.

Regards,

Zooko