History: ReleaseMap1.7

Well, I propose to coordinate the preparation of the 1.7 release, named Eta Carinae. Luis is lacking of time theese days, Garland and Mr Polidor are recluded, so, we have to help and begin the release process with the rest of us.

Here are the reasonnable steps we should conduct, the way we conduct them is an open topic of discussion beetween any all registered contributors (using the word developers is rather diminutive in regard of the diversity of the people in developers list).

1/ Release Cycle Announce

Public announce that The release is now started and can take some days. CVS is under pressure.

• what ?
  write down an announce and make pages, prepare tools
• where ?
  mail to tikiwiki-devel at lists.sf.net and tikiwiki-users at lists.sf.net, post article on tikiwiki.org, prepare tracker specific for Release 1.7 Quality Check, and any other appropriated tool.
• when ?
  2003-07-12
• who ?
  mose

2/ Release Candidate branching

A branch in CVS is constituted for the release candidate, so if a developer want to add new features for the 1.7.1 or the 1.8 he can stick on the main trunk. But all avalaible efforts are required for bugfix, when possible.

• what ? branch cvs : cvs tag -b release_eta_carinea_rc1
• where ? on the CVS
• when ? 2003-07-12
• who ? mose

3/ Release candidate diffusion

Extraction from CVS of a package from RC branch, as if it was the release, and public diffusion.

• what ? make package :
  cvs co -d tikiwiki_1.7rc1 -r release_eta_carinea_rc1
  find tikiwiki_1.7rc1 -name CVS -type d | xargs — rm -rf
  find tikiwiki_1.7rc1 -name .cvsignore -type f | xargs — rm -f
  # at that step, it's good to edit readme and changelog file and verify their information
  # concerning version number of the current package
  tar --bzip2 -cvf tikiwiki_1.7rc1.tar.bz2 tikiwiki_1.7_rc1
• where ? on a local computer
• when ? 2003-07-12
• who ? mose

4/ Release Candidate testing and fixing (including finishing translations)

Directly on the CVS main trunk, all bugfixes are applied on the RC branch (that will be merged to main trunk at release time). Go to 3/ until no bugs (ideally) or just a few (if times passes too long).

• what ?
  to get the Release Candidate from CVS
  cvs co -d tikiwiki_1.7rc1 -r release_eta_carinea_rc1 tiki
  to update an existing copy with Release Candidate
  cd tikidir && cvs update -r release_eta_carinea_rc1
• where ? on the CVS, on mailing-list, on tikiwiki.org
• when ? 2003-07-12 to 2003-07-19 or more, or less
• who ? people able to fix a bug or translate a sentence and commit to CVS

5/ Evidence of the validity of a Release Candidate

When on the devel mailing-list there are enough of positive report about the stability of the release candidate, then Release is planned. It's an arbitrary decision that has to take in account that it's not good to stay in rc state too long, because merge bring more oddities when the branch separates too much from the trunk. Well, it's just comfort. If there is bugs, it's not releasable, that's what counts.

• what ? common decision
• where ? mailing-list, tikiwiki.org
• when ? mid july til end july maybe
• who ? devel mailing-list and tikiwiki.org

6/ Release Packaging

7/ branch merging and start of the 1.7-bugfix and the 1.8 version

8/ Public announce and release

• 0.9 by Luis Argerich on 2002-10-09
• 1.0 packaged by Luis Argerich on 2002-10-28
• 1.1 Capella packaged by Garland Foster on 2002-11-01
• 1.2 Antares packaged by Garland Foster on 2002-11-19
• 1.3 Pollux packaged by Garland Foster on 2002-12-03
• 1.4rc1 Mira on 2002-12-16
• 1.4 Mira packaged by Garland Foster on 2002-12-19
• 1.4.1
• 1.4.2 in january
• 1.5rc1 Regulus on 2003-01-07
• 1.5rc2 Regulus on 2003-02-13
• 1.5 Regulus packaged by Garland Foster on 2003-02-17
• 1.6rc1 Tau Ceti on 2003-04-10
• 1.6 Tau Ceti packaged by Garland Foster on 2003-05-04
• 1.6.1 bugfixes on 2003-05-25