O.K., appalled is a strong word. Disappointed
is probably better.
At any rate, the CDT plan, if we needed a
respin, was to put the bits onto the CDT update site. Users would get the main
bits from Europa and then, if necessary, the update could come from the CDT
site without affecting the Europa bits. By asking for a re-spin, you are asking
all projects to maintain their staging areas. That just opens the door to
potential build issues as most of those projects have now moved on.
From: cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cross-project-issues-dev-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bjorn Freeman-Benson
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2007 11:15
PM
To: Cross
project issues; eclipse.org-planning-council
Subject:
[cross-project-issues-dev] Re: Re-spin process
While not as appalled as Doug, I do agree that
re-spinning brings up the question of whether the bits were truly ready for
release. Of course there are always bugs (sigh), but part of the Europa-mature
release process was to limit the set of those to the Fall and Winter
Maintenance Releases.
At the same time, I like John's concept of the open and closed streams.
I am appalled at the idea of re-spinning a release like this. The
idea of these coordinated releases was to show off the maturity of the
processes at Eclipse. Re-spin is not that.
It even makes me wonder, if you require a re-spin at this point,
did you truly meet the requirements for joining Europa? I’d say no,
because the only real requirement was to have your bits ready at the same time
as everyone else.
Having
said all that, the "moving target" approach does have its uses, both
for testing and for those who want to live on the bleeding edge and are willing
to accept the associated risks. I suggest that we carefully distinguish
"open" release train streams from "closed" ones. The
streams for the Ganymede release, and the "Europa Fall Update" are
currently open. The process bar should be low for projects that want to
contribute new contents into those streams. Once a release occurs, with
all its associated testing, coordination, process and legal reviews, that
release stream should be considered "closed". I believe there should
be a very high bar for changes to the release train after the release date, or
we risk negating all the coordinated effort that goes on to make the release
happen.
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