IcedTea release process

[Matthew Flaschen]

Gary Benson wrote:
>  - How about end users?  Do we particularly have any, or do most
>    people just use built packages?

I try to build regularly to see what's changed and just make sure the
build process still works on my machine.  Thus, I don't exclusively use
formal releases.  However, having formal releases is nice, because when
one comes out I can build from the release hg revision and say, "Well,
now it /really/ should work."

> Can we get web server statistics
>    to see if people are downloading the tarballs?

Note that I typically don't download release tarballs, as I already have
a hg tree.

> My personal opinion is that formal releases are a good idea (even
> if if nobody uses them) because if nothing else they give us a semi-
> regular excuse to blog all over the place about how great we are :)

Also a consideration.

>    We should probably have a bit of boilerplate text to stress that
>    the release request is not a cue for hurried commits of large or
>    destabilizing changes.

Heh.

Matt Flaschen