There are a lot of great
points about leveraging internet style continuous update vs. package software
releases. Putting the debate aside, I would like to get input of a
solutions on the problems we have at hand with BIRT project...
The specific issue we
have is a missing plugin dependency in a feature definition. It
prevents user from using update manager to download BIRT thru Europa Discovery site
when the user ONLY selects BIRT and click “Select Required…” . If
user selects both BIRT and DTP, he/she will not have this
issue. It was a testing hole
pre-release, since we always select DTP, WTP along with BIRT. We
shall add such test case in the future.. But I suspect that we won't be
able to test all the combinations of feature selections on the update site to
discover all the missing dpendencies. The request of re-spin
is to add the plugin depdency in a feature so that user will get all the
required plugins installed for BIRT.
Thanks
Wenfeng
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.