[bt-devel] BibleTime 2.0.alpha2 is released

[Jonathan Marsden]

Martin Gruner wrote:

> Please find it on the download page @ sourceforge.

Downloaded and packaged for Intrepid.  Building in my PPA now, will be
available there once the build servers do their thing.  This release
removes the (now unneeded) build time dependency on kdelibs5-dev, so
this is now a truly KDE-free package.

> @Eeli, Gary: how close are we to a 2.0 release? 
> Can we estimate a time frame?

Going direct from alpha to release??  That would be pretty radical!

I'm not Eeli or Gary, but I think the following are still needed:

 * A public beta test period in which some defined number of users run
the beta for a defined amount of test time within a given period, and
report their results (example beta test definition: 20 different users
will test the BibleTime 2.0 beta1 release, each user will install the
product and use it for at least 30 minutes between 01 April 2009 and 15
April 2009; at least 15 of these users will report their use by email to
bt-devel, including reports of any bugs or issues found).

 * Probably a "release candidate" release that fixes whatever
release-critical issues emerge from the beta testing.  Again with
defined goals of number of users and amount of testing.

 * Check all known bugs for any showstoppers (either known now or
arising from beta testing).  For example, is the rather odd look of the
themes other than the default one (simple) considered a showstopper for
a final release?  This issue is still present on my machine here running
BT 2.0 alpha2.

 * Create and test installers for all available platforms (including
Windows, if 2.0 is to be a Windows-capable release).  Is anyone building
 and testing under OS X using Qt/Mac yet? :)

 * Update all documentation to reflect both new 2.0 features and new 2.0
platform(s). (Trivial example: info such as "BibleTime can be used with
other window managers such as Gnome, BlackBox, Fluxbox, OpenBox or
Sawfish, providing the appropriate base libarires are already installed
on your computer." is not really meaningful or helpful to Windows users,
but is still present in the handbook, and 'libarires' is a typo).

Lastly, it's a bit debatable to call this a release requirement, but I'd
also suggest that it would be very much preferable if the code was known
to build correctly under Windows using a free (libre) toolchain.  I'm
still waiting on a description of the current MinGW toolchain setup
process before looking any further at this... without one, I seem to
just be going over ground others have already covered.  I don't know if
anyone else has made any progress towards this?

Jonathan