Hyrum K. Wright wrote:
> I've been visiting with a number of users and other interested parties
> about the future of Subversion, but one of the things I'm constantly
> hearing is "when will 1.7 be released?" It'd be nice to be able to
> address that. :)
>
> 1.7 will be an important release, but it feels as if we've been stalling
> a bit lately. I'm excited to see Mike, Julian and other getting
> involved, and I think the work we've left to do is well-scoped (if not
> well understood by everybody yet).
>
> In the past, we've been hesitant to commit to a specific date, but I
> think making such a commitment to ourselves would be both useful and
> motivating. To kick things off, I propose the following:
>
> * We shoot for a mid-May branch date, say May 15.
>
> * We can use the June Berlin hack-a-thon to do a final push for any bugs
> which have popped up during the RC phase (or a push toward an RC if
> something postpones the branch date).
>
> * A final release happens sometime mid-summer
>
> I'd be very happy if this process were to accelerate, but I think as
> things look right now, the above looks reasonable.
>
> Thoughts?
I think folks' hesitation in the past to commit to a date has been less the
result of laziness and more the result of self-awareness. Subversion is a
volunteer community, and for most of our volunteers, I think the risks are
pretty low. Whether we ship 1.7 in the Summer or the Fall of the year is
of little measurable consequence to them. That's not a bad thing, and
please don't assume that I mean otherwise. I'm just saying that I believe
the inherent riskiness of deadlines (note the "dead" in the first half of
the word) is at odds with a workforce that, for the most part, doesn't bear
the burden of any risk. In such a universe, the motivation to contribute
has to come from something other than a somewhat arbitrarily chosen deadline.
Of course, none of this means that those who *are* so motivated can't decide
for themselves to embrace the challenge of a deadline, and the dates you
present are as good as any to embrace. I have faith that if, in fact,
Subversion is beta-ready by mid-May, our community as a whole will accept
the recommendation of branching for stabilization at that point.
So if you're game and I'm game, then let's call it a challenge we accept.
If our corporately-sponsored peers are game, too, all the merrier. And if
anyone else reading this comes bearing preexisting motivation but lacks a
challenge at the moment, we welcome you to the table, too!
--
C. Michael Pilato <cmpilato_at_collab.net>
CollabNet <> www.collab.net <> Distributed Development On Demand
Received on 2010-02-16 21:00:58 CET