[bt-devel] Alpha/beta release schedule

[Eeli Kaikkonen]

On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Jeremy Erickson wrote:

> Hi,
> 	While we are at it, it would be a good idea for my coursework to come up with
> a tentative schedule of what I should work on when.  I do know that October
> 18-21 I will be able to complete a considerable amount of work.  That is my
> Fall Break, but I plan to stay back here and get some work done.  I will
> probably be working at least six hours a day for some of those days.  For now
> I can work on fixing bugs, but I think a good tentative schedule would
> include what bugs to try to fix which weeks.  Could we put one together?

We have to try.

I changed the Prerelease Bugs wiki page a bit. I added "voted for
alpha1" clauses into some bug items. My name in parentheses means that I
voted for it, not that I am necessarily going to fix it. Go through the
items and add a new vote if you feel like it, add your name after a vote
or tell about your disagreement about a vote.

Major things to fix:
- Bookshelf manager should be working (install/uninstall)
  (No bug reports yet, it was too unfinished)
- Like Martin said, data paths and other installing issues should be
  solved so that testers can work safely

Major things NOT to fix yet:
- D'n'D
- i18n
- to be ready for final distribution packaging and installing

There are not many minor things to fix but it may be hard to say how
long they take to fix. I suppose they are simple but more than once I
have spent half a day fixing one "simple" bug. If all goes well Jeremy
could fix all those small bugs in a day. But then we have a problem if
we have a plan for the alpha1 release: other major things may not be
ready. Packaging and installation - including the data paths - is not
familiar to me and I suppose Jeremy can not handle it either. Therefore
I suggest that Martin takes care of that.

We could do like this:

- Select the features and fixes which surely will go to the release
- Martin takes the installation, Jeremy takes the smaller bugs, I will
  continue with the Search Dialog
- Whoever finishes first can continue with Bookshelf Manager
- Whoever finishes next can take over the Bookshelf Manager or take
  new minor bugs which we will select

The next step is to read through and edit the Bugs page and/or announce
the agreement here. We can of course do the coding already, but after we
have agreed about the features and fixes we can set some schedules for
different parts.

About the future releases: maybe it would be good to call "alphas" all
relaeses which lack some features or are not ready for distribution
packaging. After we have code which could be released as binary packages
and have all the features we want in the final release we will make a
beta release (or couple of them) which may still have some known bugs
and deficiencies. After fixing the bugs (and possibly implementing some
non-crucial small new features or refactoring) we can release either an
RC or the final release.



  Yours,
	Eeli Kaikkonen (Mr.), Oulu, Finland
	e-mail: eekaikko at mailx.studentx.oulux.fix (with no x)