> The question is what, exactly, makes actually > getting releases out so difficult? Is most of the time spent getting > things working on uncommon (presumably little-tested) systems? Are the > obstructions typically due to patches that were not actually ready to > go in (despite positive reviews) or changes in the target platforms > (e.g. gcc version bumps)? Essentially I'm asking what makes release > management hard before trying to figure out if there a way to better > distribute the load? >
Honestly, I think the only thing that makes it hard is that we don't have enough people available to do it. It's not that it's so hard, but you need to be able to make release management one of your main priorities for the whole release (in my limited experience, anyway). You have to merge the outstanding patches, work out the obvious kinks on sage.math, then pass it off to two build farms, wait for logs from those machines and other bugs on sage-devel ... I think it's hard to find people who can actually make that commitment -- we all have babies, teaching, etc. that keep us busy enough, on top of whatever other work/research we're supposed to be doing. I wrote that sage -merge code when I was release manager in the hopes that it would entice more people to jump in, but I don't know that it helped so much. The last time this topic came up, I proposed having one "main" release manager in charge of a release, but having people rotate through being release manager for even just a single alpha or rc. I don't think anyone else liked the idea, but I still think it could be really useful -- it's much easier to find people who can focus on being release manager for a week than a month. And, let's be honest, no release cycle is really going to be much shorter than that. What's happened lately is that someone starts with the aim of a "quick release" and the best of intentions, and then some weird bug/issue/build failure pops up, and while it's getting resolved, they have other things in life that need their attention. Then they hand the reins to William, who happily takes over and finishes off the release. :) This works, but I don't think it makes people excited about jumping back into the fray -- I know I was left with the feeling that I really need to be able to "clear my schedule" for a bit to do it. (FWIW, I'm planning on doing it again in January, once I'm done with teaching ...) -cc --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send an email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to sage-devel-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URL: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
