[Ohrrpgce] Quarterly Stable Releases?

[Ralph Versteegen]

I trust you saw my reply on SS already.
My two comments were that first, I'm not sure about a strict schedule, and
second that we should also hold up releases for anything that could cause
backcompat problems. Although as you say, we're generally good about
keeping unfinished features disabled or out of sight. For example right now
I would refuse a release until pathfinding is better nailed down.

Also, doing release candidates is a good. So the actual release date is
whenever the RC is ready.

Although we've been really active the last 7 months or so, we have
sometimes gone couple month without doing any substantial work on the
engine. Sometimes no commits for over a month. At our current activity
level a 3 month release cycle could even be too long, while other times
there wouldn't anything to release.
Lets take a look..
http://tmc.castleparadox.com/ohr/gitstats/activity.html

And what if we want to release in less than 3 months after the last
release? Sometimes we might want to release while things are stable, before
starting on something destabilising.

I was hoping that we would release Dwimmercrafty this month, but actually
with only two weeks left even a RC at the end of the month may be unlikely.

I don't remember if we've ever set a schedule for a release "X months from
now" rather than just near-term ones like "2 weeks from now". I think being
able to see from months away when we want the next release to occur will be
very helpful, and that we can manage to stick to it.

On 13 July 2017 at 06:40, James Paige <Bob at hamsterrepublic.com> wrote:

> I mentioned this once already in a thread on on slimesalad, but I thought
> this might be a better place to discuss the idea.
>
> I was thinking we should switch to a quarterly stable release schedule,
> rather than a whenever-we-feel-everything-important-that-we-wanted-to-add-has-been-finished
> schedule.
>
> We could do an August/November/February/May rotation, where I would branch
> and upload the stable release some day on the first full week of each of
> those months.
>
> I can set up a calendar alert that goes to this mailing list to warn us
> when the next release is 1 and 2 weeks away, so we have time to wrap up
> last minute stuff.
>
> The only things that would block a release would be critical or datalossy
> bugs, or other substantial problems that would make a new stable release
> measurably less stable than the previous one.
>
> Half finished features would not be an excuse to delay a release, because
> honestly, this whole program is a big beautiful muddy wad of half-finished
> features, and it always has been and it always will be, and I wouldn't have
> it any other way ;)
>
> I think we have actually been doing a pretty good job of keeping the
> nightly wip versions safe and stable, keeping the unfinished stuff more or
> less comfined to the "spam" menu, so I think this change is pretty low-risk.
>
> Thoughts?
>
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