On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 03:28:28PM -0500, Scott Kostyshak wrote: > > I think this should be done before release. Does it mean that I have to make > > it a beta blocker? > > No. In my opinion, a beta blocker is something that falls into one of > the following categories: > > (1) a fix for a bug that would be so annoying for the user that they > would not give beta1 a good test, and it might even scare them from > testing future pre-release versions of LyX. > > (2) a fix that us developers can't test completely ourselves and we > would need a wider test base to be confident in a change before a > release with it. In this category I put Windows-specific and > Mac-specific bugs, for example. Also bugs that we weren't able to > reproduce ourselves (and thus we cannot check whether a fix really does > fix anything). I think removing the PNGs was a good example of this. I > would not have wanted to do that after beta. Thankfully one of our > alpha-testers, Andrew, caught a problem that occurs on Windows. I'm now > confident in the change and I'm glad we have it for 2.2.0. > > (3) a bug fix that represents a big change and we are unsure of > possible unwanted consequences. We would not want to put this in a final > release directly. > > Note that I just made up the above three categories. I would be > interested in your thoughts and the thoughts of others and would add > these to the release manager notes that I am collecting.
I want to add that I think our situation is special because we are really hoping that there is only one beta release (we have not said this explicitly but I think it is easy to pick up on this sentiment from almost every developer). If we were open to multiple betas and time was not so much a concern, then I would say that only category (1) issues above are blockers for beta1 and the other two categories could be blockers for e.g. beta2. This also assumes though that we have a wide enough test base of users. For example, I'm not sure that those who test beta1 would also be willing to invest the time and risk to test beta2. I will announce beta1 widely and get some publicity for it (on various sites that cover LaTeX and software and open source). I kind of view it as a one-time shot that we have to get it right. If we mess something up, then we waste publicity and also lose reputation for future testers. Of course, beta is beta and if there is a big problem it is not so unexpected so I don't think that *so* much is at stake, but I think it is good to pretend that it is :) Scott
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