On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 09:46:45AM +0200, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > It was proably discussed last time, but I do not remember: what is the > rationale for having an alpha before feature freeze? Shouldn't it be > the opposite?
The requirements and expectations of an alpha are low. I think it is understood that there should not be any big features right before the feature freeze. But doing it this way allows us to get an alpha out quickly and get testing on 99% of the features that will go into the final release. On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 11:23:16AM +0100, José Abílio Matos wrote: > OTHO I remember that as the release manager of one of the previous releases > the alpha release was the first moment to the test and lubricate the release > procedure. To guarantee that tools like "make distcheck" work as intended. By > decoupling this from the beta stage where we should by then be in feature > freeze the testing was easier. > Note that this is my personal recollection, I can be wrong. :-) Indeed, this is nice. I think it was more important last time when it was the first time I was release manager. It was good for me to practice the fun process of signing the files, make sure upload to FTP works, etc. > With that said we have improved the test and maintenance of the release tools > and since the last version was released less than one year ago and Scott is > the release manager I agree that we can skip this version. But clearly this > is > Scott's call. I am inclined to keep the alpha but am open to more discussion. One reason for keeping the alpha is that we do not have strong requirements to get it out. It is a way to start the ball rolling. Requirements to release a beta are more strict, and it is nice to break up a big task into smaller more achievable tasks. A second reason to keep the alpha is that very few Windows and Mac users can compile a development version. An alpha is nice in situations where we cannot reproduce a bug. We can ask users if they can still reproduce e.g. a serious crash that they reported. This can let us know if that issue is something we need to focus on fixing before a beta. On Mon, Apr 10, 2017 at 11:58:51AM +0200, Jean-Marc Lasgouttes wrote: > Seriously, I am not sure about the alpha release. It is serious work, and I > am not sure what we will gain from it (how many user would try it, but not > try nightlies, for example). Have we produced nightlies before? Doesn't that require an automatic build system for Mac and Windows? I hope others join this conversation. To alpha or not to alpha? Scott
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