[Lazarus] Release Schedule (was:Re: Linux Journal article)

[Vincent Snijders]

>>> Q: Out of all outstanding bugs... How many would be "Stop-Release"
>>> flagged ?
>> All.
>> If a bug's annoyance level can be lowered far enough or if no good fix
>> can be found, then it can be moved to the next version.
> 
> I think that a work in progress (Agile) with quarterly release
> schedules would certainly benefit the project as far as repeat
> visitors and prospective contributors.

 From an agile point of view, we are releasing almost daily (sometimes a 
build is broken or something goes wrong with the build machine) with the 
snapshots.

Ideally, I would like to release every 6-8 weeks. That is unrealistic 
now, so I aim for once every 3-4 months, which usually gets at least 5-6 
months.

What gets into a release:
* all fixes for bugs that are regressions, things that worked with a 
previous release. This one is harder now than usually, because of the 
switch from gtk1 to gtk2, some things did work on gtk1 better than one 
gtk2 (most things it is the other way around, so I have heard).
* patches that are submitted enough time before a freeze (patches that 
have been submitted in the last month or so, got the target for 0.9.30). 
  Patches usually won't block a release and are postponed rather easily.

If you think you can manage a quarterly release, you should have taken 
over the fixes 0.9.26 branch (last paragraphs of 
http://lazarus-dev.blogspot.com/2009/04/no-updates-on-0926-fixes-branch.html). 
You could have maintained that and I would even allow you to merge most 
of trunk to it, if you as a maintainer felt that was a good decision. I 
think the offer is still valid.

Vincent