Proposed IcedTea6-1.5 Release

[Andrew Haley]

Andrew John Hughes wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 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.

In my mind, the main advantage to releasing from a branch in the
normal way it that it's much easier for other people to look at the
repository and understand what is going on.  It's a more open process
that makes it much easier for people to come into this community and
participate.

Having spent a lot of time doing software archaeology on very old
projects, I really appreciate transparency and repeatability of
processes.

Andrew.