Xfce 4.8 entering planning phase

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Hey all,

with this mail, I'd like to officially kick off the Xfce 4.8 development
cycle. I've uploaded the schedule to this page:

  http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/4.8/schedule

As you can see we enter the so-called Planning Phase today which lasts
until the end of the month but can be extended to September 13th. This
phase has three purposes:

  1. Decide who's in the release team and who takes which job.
  2. Discuss the so-called Essential Dependencies for the cycle and
     decide which versions to depend on. The end of the Planning Phase
     marks Dependency Freeze and after this point features depending on
     more recent dependencies have to be optional.
  3. Think about which features are realistic and make a
     non-obligatory list. Inform the community about 1., 2. and 3. at
     the end of the planning phase.


Release Team
============

As I've mentioned in my other mail, I'd like to propose Stephan and
myself for the QA Official and Release Manager positions. For the
reasons see that mail. This is of course debatable.

We need Release Assistant(s) for updating the website upon releases and
helping the Release Manager with his tasks. The tasks are described on
http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/release-model#planning_phase_2_2_weeks. I'd
love to see two or three people volunteer for this. Release Assistants
may or may not be core developers. Personally, I think it's a nice way
for people not hacking on Xfce 24/7 to help Xfce by other means.

Jérôme has done an awesome job updating the website for the 4.6
release. I'd love to have him on board. Jérôme, what do you think?

Any other suggestions?


Dependencies
============

http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/release-model#essential_dependencies
doesn't have much information about the so-called Essential
Dependencies yet. Those are dependencies required by Xfce core
components. Their versions may vary with each cycle. 

So for the 4.8 cycle we'll have to a) complete this list and b) decide
which versions we depend on. I suggest we do that in another thread and
use this one for discussing the Release Team.


Planned Features / Informing the Community
==========================================

I encourage everyone to think about the features he wants to implement
in this cycle and post a feature list on this mailinglist. These
features are not obligatory to be implemented but it'd be nice if we
could give the community a non-final feature preview. This way they
have something to look forward to, are encouraged to try our
development releases. Maybe this information even inspires some to
contribute to the code because they'd like to help with some of the
features.


Ok, I think I covered everything. Let me know what you think!

  - Jannis
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