Re: GRUB release schedule?

[Peter Jones <pjones@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Jul 20, 2015 at 09:25:56PM +0200, Vladimir 'phcoder' Serbinenko wrote:
> I'll do next beta tomorrow and will assess current open bugs to see how far
> we're from release

Did this ever happen?  It doesn't appear as though it did.

So I'm back with my original question: What's the path to regular
releases?  I don't honestly believe we have to fix everything about
source control, patch contribution, and test suites to do that, though
those are all important things.  Plenty of projects do releases with the
same tools this one has, with great success.  But this is one more case
where the search for perfection is stopping us from having any releases
*at all*.

"Fix everything in the code *and* the infrastructure and then do a
release" is not workable.  We need to have regular releases, and we need
to make improvements to the project's infrastructure and processes be a
part of those releases.  Waiting for a flag day with each thing to be
improved just means delaying indefinitely, especially if the wish list
includes things nobody is actively working on.

So that means we need two things: 1) decide on a schedule for one release,
2) decide when the ones after it will be.

Here's a suggestion: Schedule a release at the end of January, and work
towards that.  It doesn't have to be perfect; everybody is shipping
something based on the current tree already anyway.  Then plan on
another release at the end of July, and follow that plan indefinitely.
It's okay if there are reasons to adjust it sometimes, but let's start
with a plan.

Thoughts?


> Le 20 juil. 2015 20:23, "Peter Jones" <pjones@redhat.com> a écrit :
> 
> > Hi everyone,
> > Is there a plan for when upcoming GNU GRUB releases will happen?
> >
> > As far as I can tell, the last official release on
> > ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/grub/ was 2.00 on 28-Jun-2012, and the last beta
> > on http://alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/grub/ for the next version was
> > 2.02~beta2 on 24-Dec-2013 .  There are (give or take) 471 patches
> > committed since that beta 18 months ago.
> >
> > In the mean time, nearly every Linux distro is shipping a package
> > derived from the 2.02~beta2 release plus some number of patches,
> > some from the upstream repo and some not, and it's cumbersome to rectify
> > which ones aren't upstream vs which ones have been fixed upstream with
> > /nearly/ the same patch, etc., with all the noise of so many patches
> > since the release.
> >
> > I suspect this would be better for a lot of GRUB users if releases
> > happened on a regular schedule, or if, relatively often (say once or
> > twice per year), a release schedule that spans several weeks and
> > organized some kind of alpha->beta->release progression were decided
> > upon and followed.
> >
> > So, can we make a release process that happens according to some regular
> > cadence?  What needs to be done to make regular releases happen?  Going
> > for years with the patch volume GRUB sees without doing a release is
> > really not good for anybody.
> >
> > --
> >         Peter
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Grub-devel mailing list
> > Grub-devel@gnu.org
> > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel
> >

> _______________________________________________
> Grub-devel mailing list
> Grub-devel@gnu.org
> https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel


-- 
        Peter