On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:31 AM, C. Michael Pilato <cmpilato_at_collab.net> wrote:
> Yeah, I'm not sure where the breakdown between alpha and beta really is for
> us. If anything, I'd claim that we don't have alpha releases (which tend to
> be defined as something like mere feature-completeness) at all -- our
> pre-RCs are more like betas: "Basically ready to release but with known bugs".
>
>
> > Anyone object if I adjust
> >
> > http://subversion.tigris.org/hacking.html#release-stabilization
> >
> > to reflect this philosophy of getting alphas out for testing more
> > easily? (Hyrum should still roll a new one if he can, I think, but
> > that doesn't mean testing should stop until then, that's all.)
>
> This is such an objection.
>
> But I want to make something very clear. Nowhere is it implied that our
> signatures are a statement of the perfection of a release. I see the
> signing process as orthogonal to the perfection of the code. The question
> that potential signers should be asking is, "Do I believe this release
> represents software that is of the quality that it claims to be, and am I
> willing to attach my name to such a declaration?" If we want to release
> this alpha1 today with known bugs in the bindings and a failing copy test,
> that's *totally fine*. As a potential tester of a release, I'd much rather see:
>
>
> This release is signed by the following folks: ... NOTE: We are aware
> of some problems with the Perl and Ruby bindings, so you might not want
> to use this tarball if you need that functionality to work.
>
> than:
>
> This release has no guarantees, and no testers willing to go on record.
>
> Best of luck to ya!
>
> In summary:
>
> * I don't believe this release is of alpha quality; I think it's a beta.
> * I don't care, however, if we call it an alpha.
> * All releases published by this community should be signed.
I sort of brought this up at the beginning, I just did not want to
make a big deal of it. I have never been involved with a software
project that would call this an alpha, as opposed to beta. This is
way beyond the alpha stage (IMO). If we want to call it a beta, then
I would have no objection to putting a little more effort into making
the release the best quality we can, and at worst documenting the
problems we are aware of with the release. IOW, I would personally be
OK with releasing a beta tarball that had some known issues with
something like the bindings.
--
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/
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Received on 2008-02-26 16:46:26 CET