Proposed IcedTea6-1.5 Release

[Andrew John Hughes]

2009/5/19 Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com>:
> Lillian Angel wrote:
>> Lillian Angel wrote:
>>> Lillian Angel wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I would like to have a release in the new future, which includes the
>>>> new b16 update and several important improvements to the plugin.
>>>>
>>>> Any objections or suggestions?
>>>
>>> There is still quite a bit of work to be done for the upcoming 1.5
>>> release, but I have cloned the main repo:
>>> http://icedtea.classpath.org/hg/release/icedtea6-1.5/
>>>
>>> It has not been tagged yet, but continue to commit to the main repo
>>> and I will update the 1.5 one when we are ready to go.
>>
>> I have removed this release branch from the server. Too much effort was
>> being duplicated. Since this is a major release, all release work will
>> be based on the main repo using the rc style of tagging. In the case of
>> having a minor release, a separate branch will be created.
>>
>> There is no "freeze" policy. Once everyone agrees that a release
>> candidate is golden, it will be the final release.
>>
>> Does this work for everyone? I am open to suggestions.
>
> I think we should do this in the same way that is used for many other
> free software projects:
>
> 1.  Pick a branch point on the trunk.  Now seems like a good time.
> Make a branch from that branch point.
>
> 2.  Test that release branch.  Make corrections where needed.
>
> 3.  Make the release from the release branch.
>
> There's no advantage to releasing directly from the trunk.
>
> If it just so happens that there is no difference between the release
> branch and the trunk at the time of release, that's fine.
>
> Andrew.
>

I agree.  With creating the release directly from trunk, either the
tree has to be frozen during the release period or there is a risk of
commits being made that will destabilise the pending release.  A
branch that is identical to trunk should be largely zero cost if
created on the remote server (see Mark's email:
http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/distro-pkg-dev/2009-February/004877.html).

It also means that security fixes can be made available immediately
for the last release.  I did this with IcedTea7 1.9.1 for the last
batch of updates.  We still don't have a release of IcedTea6 that
includes these fixes until 1.5 becomes available.
-- 
Andrew :-)

Free Java Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc. (http://www.redhat.com)

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