[cross-project-issues-dev] Re: Re-spin process

[Bjorn Freeman-Benson <bjorn.freeman-benson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

While not as appalled as Doug, I do agree that re-spinning brings up the question of whether the bits were truly ready for release. Of course there are always bugs (sigh), but part of the Europa-mature release process was to limit the set of those to the Fall and Winter Maintenance Releases.

At the same time,  I like John's concept of the open and closed streams.

I am appalled at the idea of re-spinning a release like this. The idea of these coordinated releases was to show off the maturity of the processes at Eclipse. Re-spin is not that.

It even makes me wonder, if you require a re-spin at this point, did you truly meet the requirements for joining Europa? I’d say no, because the only real requirement was to have your bits ready at the same time as everyone else.

Having said all that, the "moving target" approach does have its uses, both for testing and for those who want to live on the bleeding edge and are willing to accept the associated risks.  I suggest that we carefully distinguish "open" release train streams from "closed" ones.  The streams for the Ganymede release, and the "Europa Fall Update" are currently open.  The process bar should be low for projects that want to contribute new contents into those streams.  Once a release occurs, with all its associated testing, coordination, process and legal reviews, that release stream should be considered "closed". I believe there should be a very high bar for changes to the release train after the release date, or we risk negating all the coordinated effort that goes on to make the release happen.