[Lazarus] Release 1.0, part 2

[Samuel Herzog]

Hi,
here my comments about this:

Lazarus uses a "BugTracker"-driven release/version cycle.
So the people who have rights to priorize the bugs actually decide about this.

I think this is OK.
But to get closer to a version 1.0 the handling of the bug-reports should be changed a little.

If I look at the remaining 44 Open Points of 0.9.30 then I suggest the following:

A) bugs without a simple test-project to reproduce the problem should be moved to next version.

B) bugs which are not reproducable should be moved to next version e.g. "modal form is sometimes buggy"

C) feature requests should be moved to the next version. e.g. "Combine the Find dialog and Find in Files dialog to a single dialog"

And if we one day really want to have a version 1.0, then we need to agree first on a feature freeze.

Happy coding to all of you.

Sam

--- Tom Lisjac <zikon770 at gmail.com> schrieb am So, 29.11.2009:

Von: Tom Lisjac <zikon770 at gmail.com>
Betreff: [Lazarus] Release 1.0, part 2
An: lazarus at lists.lazarus.freepascal.org
Datum: Sonntag, 29. November 2009, 5:14

>> So what exactly is the Lazarus team afraid of in getting to v1.0?
>
> Since we think it's not ready for 1.0.
>
> Period.

The above comment seems to have stopped the previous Version 1.0
thread so I'm starting a new one with the hopes of hearing some
additional comments and suggestions for achieving this goal. Of course
the core compiler and ide development teams have done an awesome job
over the many years that this project has been in process, but *many*
others have also contributed their time and energy along the way and
have an interest in seeing this project achieve a 1.0 release.
Personally, I'd like to see Lazarus and FPC start to move forward and
get the respect and larger following that they deserve... but with
it's history and stalled 1.0, I don't blame any noob, experienced
developer or business that makes an informed decision to avoid this
toolchain.

The problem I see is credibility... or "if we write a lot of code with
Lazarus/FPC, will it be maintainable with the project in perpetual
beta?". Delphi was stable from release 2 and code I developed with it
in versions 2, 3, 4 and 5 continued to "just work" as I upgraded. Not
the case here. I've been writing new code with Lazarus since 2002 and
have learned that anything I write today is virtually guaranteed to be
broken and uncompilable tomorrow because somebody thought it would be
cool to change some aspect of the Object Pascal language or completely
revise a library interface or function. It's become a lot of work to
maintain the stuff I've already written and I'm reluctantly
considering not using Lazarus for any new projects.

Businesses laugh in our general direction over the code breakage issue
where a project investment using Lazarus/FPC may end up a QA and
maintenance nightmare. This view is shared by many of my colleagues
who can't understand why I'm still using a beta ide on a "dinosaur
language from the 80's". How's that for an insult? I agree with
Graeme's posting that this has become a public relations issue... an
obvious one. I'm also starting to see it as a squandered opportunity
to displace the bloated languages on the Linux platform where fast,
compact and self contained Lazarus apps should be a dominant presence
right now... today.

Yes, Lazarus is an open source project, people work on it for fun and
there is no business entity that is promoting it. Lazarus has been
active for around 10 years and FPC even longer then that. The Linux OS
also started to emerge during this same timeframe with the same type
of development model. To compare, Linux is now running corporate
datacenters around the world... and Lazarus is still in beta with very
few public applications deployed.

I don't think a case can be made that the project isn't ready for
1.0... after 10 years of development and it's current, impressive
state, of course it is. The next steps are to actively discuss the
finer points of what "ready" is and to set a definite goal to achieve
it. As I see it, this will involve a feature set freeze, establishing
bug thresholds *and* making a reasonably sincere commitment to not
break compatibility at the source level past the version 1.0 release
that will hopefully be shared by the FPC team.

A version 1.0 milestone is crucial and much more then a given feature
set and minimized bug list. It also conveys the idea of stability and
confidence to anyone who may be interested in investing their time to
learn the language, use the tools and create something of lasting
value.  If we don't start building that confidence in the larger
community pretty soon, this project will continue to be viewed as a
"toy" and will eventually become a relic to a once great development
paradigm.

Thanks,

-Tom

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