Re: Stable releases

[Neil Jerram]

Rob Browning <address@hidden> writes:

> I think more frequent stable releases are a good idea, though at least
> right now, there is enough by-hand work involved that I wouldn't want
> to do it *too* often.  Of course I could probably automate things a
> bit more. [1]

I'd like to help if I can with automating things.  Is the release
process documented somewhere so I can begin to get an idea of what's
involved?

> Note though, that one thing that is key to making more frequent stable
> releases easy is careful discipline on the part of anyone committing
> to the stable branch.  If everyone remembers to include the
> appropriate ChangeLog, NEWS, etc. entries, then there's much less to
> do at release time.  Otherwise, the diff against the last stable
> release has to be examined more carefully, developers have to be
> prodded, etc.

Yes, absolutely.  I think a large part of the problem for 1.8.1,
however, was that we weren't sure what the organization and format of
NEWS should be.  Once we're decided on that, I think it would be
easier to put in entries for the diffs.

> [1] It might be nice if there were a more automated way to generate
>     the html and text NEWS summaries for the web pages and the list
>     announcements.  I suppose I could just have the list announcement
>     point to the web page, but I don't know how much people like
>     having the summary in the message itself.

I'm sure we should be able to automate format stuff.  NEWS is in text
anyway, so doesn't this just mean that we need text -> html for the
webpage?

Regards,
     Neil