Xfce development and release model

[Jannis Pohlmann]

On Wed, 27 May 2009 18:04:08 +0200
Jannis Pohlmann <jannis at xfce.org> wrote:

> Hey all,
> 
> for the last two days, Stephan and I have been busy thinking about how
> to improve the development and release process after we've switched to
> git. Today we wrote these ideas down in a document available in our
> wiki.
> 
> There are a number of questions and problems that came up again and
> again every now and then, like
> 
>     * What are the core components of Xfce?
>     * How often do we want to release and in what fashion?
>     * Who's in charge of the release process?
>     * What dependency versions do we depend on?
>     * When are feature-freeze, string-freeze, code-freeze and thelike?
>     * How many pre-releases should we do and how do we call them?
>     * What do we use as a replacement for SVN revision versioning with
>       Git?
> 
> Another important question is how can we reduce the amount of stress
> and work for the individuals involved in development and releasing? 
> 
> The following document tries to answer most of these questions and
> gives detailed explanations on how we think the entire development and
> release process can be improved significantly.
> 
> There are a number of reasons why we think the approach described in
> the document meets these goals:
> 
>   * work is distributed among people involved in the project
>   * blocker bugs are clearly defined 
>   * individual releases during the development and maintenance process
>     allow people to publish bugfixes more easily and make the overall
>     release process less painful
>   * releasing often reduces deltas and thus helps distributions and
>     users follow the development process more easily. It also helps to
>     trace regressions.
>   * it includes a proper definition of the Xfce core
>   * the planning phase reduces confusion about dependency versions and
>     dependencies in general. It serves as a solid foundation for every
>     phase of the release cycle
>   * it's more fun to develop if you know what you're working towards
> (a fixed schedule helps to focus)
> 
> So, without further ado, here's the document:
> 
>   http://wiki.xfce.org/releng/release-policy

Oh, yeah, and please, please, please give comments and feedback!

  - Jannis
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