[buildship-dev] Buildship and the Mars Simultaneous Release repository

[David M Williams <david_williams@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Buildship committers, 

Besides many other roles you might see
me in, I am also chair of the Eclipse Foundation's Planning Council, and
it is in that role, that I'm sending this message. The primary role of
the Planning Council is to coordinate our "yearly release" and
its corresponding huge repository. 

I don't know if or how many of you were
aware of the details, but there has been some discussion at the Planning
Council if Buildship could be allowed to participate, and to be in that
Simultaneous Release repository, even though it has not been in any of
the Mars milestones. And in brief, the answer was "no", that
as a group, we didn't feel comfortable with that, primarily due to it feeling
"rushed" or "last minute" and one of reasons the Simultaneous
Release works is that everyone participates "all along" so by
the end it's pretty easy and no big surprises (which is no easy task, given
there are 50 or so projects participating). 

That said, everyone supported your project
in general and are excited about you joining Eclipse. So, I just wanted
to reach out, introduce myself, and offer any help if you need it. I know
you have been working closely with your mentors (Wayne and Markus) so that's
good, and no reason not to continue that. I just wanted to be sure you
knew we, the Planning Council were supportive of your project. 

We also felt there were good alternatives
for you. For example, you can still release in June, under the normal Eclipse
Development Process (EDP) rules, and simply be in your own repository and
offer what ever downloads you'd like from your web pages. (Plus, Wayne
I believe has some other ideas he may discuss with you, about "the
Market Place"). Plus, there is still the possibility you could be
in the Simultaneous Release repository in September, the time we call "SR1".
(Service Release has become a bit of misnomer). To do that, you'd still
have to meet all the other requirements, plus be "in the aggregation
builds" from July to September, and, would still take something of
an "exception to the rules", but I think my then, you could easily
show that you "fit in" smoothly without stress. In other words,
you don't have to wait a whole year, or anything like that. 

Thanks, welcome to Eclipse, and best
of luck! 

P.S. From what I've heard, you already
know about Simultaneous
Release Requirements  if
not the whole Mars
Wiki. 
If you haven't yet, would also encourage
your project lead or release engineer to subscribe to the cross-project
mail list and subscribe to the
bugzilla component of cross-project
-- just to get a better idea of the kind of issues that come up and how
we 50 projects (or so) stay in communication about the Simultaneous Release.


P.S.S. It was nice to see Ethene's post
about your downloads ... to see a little activity on your dev list! :)