There is no release manager! There is no release manager!

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Oct 7, 2008, at 21:36, paul beard wrote:

>> Maybe some folks have not [there is no release manager!] gotten the
>> ideal firmly in their heads [there is no release manager!] yet that
>> there is, in fact, NO RELEASE MANAGER for MacPorts right now?
>>
>> Perhaps we should send out some sort of announcement calling formally
>> for volunteers for the position?
>>
>> I dunno, perhaps that seems superfluous, but I'll still bet that  
>> there
>> are a couple of people out there laboring under the misapprehension
>> that there is, in fact, a release manager for MacPorts (there  
>> isn't!).
>
>
> FAIL.
>
> There has been a release manager and portmgr@ team for quite some  
> time and this bug lingers, festers even.
>
> If this is part of a strategy of annoying users to the point where  
> they sign up to be release manager just so it gets done, I'm not  
> sure it will work. Civilians like me have no idea what the actual  
> steps are to get a release cut, even one so trivial as the bug fix  
> for 1.6. If the guys who were doing it had a hard time with it,  
> what would make someone who isn't an active port maintainer think  
> they could do it?
>
> Absent a release manager or team, what would it take to get a  
> release schedule (quarterly? monthly?) and/or a roadmap? Not sure  
> it makes a lot of sense to fret about a release manager if we don't  
> really know what a release is or why we need one. A roadmap/set of  
> benchmarks/goals would help and from there a release calendar could  
> be derived.
>
> If you do really want volunteers, why not provide some insight into  
> what's involved and how it works? Are there tools? Is there a  
> process? Bueller?

Nobody is trying to annoy you. This is a volunteer project. When  
volunteers run out of time, then stuff doesn't get done. Like making  
releases. I think there is said to be no release manager because Juan  
has been too busy to make a release in almost a year. The two other  
portmgr members, Markus and James, have also not been very involved  
with MacPorts in that time. See the thread "Important: MacPorts  
PortMgr Changes" in which this is explained, and it is proposed that  
new members of portmgr be nominated:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2008-September/ 
011705.html

As Anders said, there is a document describing the release process:

http://trac.macports.org/browser/trunk/base/portmgr/ReleaseProcess

We don't need a roadmap at this time; we just need to release the  
work that has been done on trunk over the past year. After that, I  
don't think we need a roadmap either; we just need to make regular  
releases when there is new work on trunk to release.

I would be a bit concerned about a newcomer preparing the releases. I  
would hope that the release manager would have an intimate  
familiarity with MacPorts, for which I think you need experience  
maintaining ports and maybe even contributing some patches to base as  
well. At least, releases would have to be tested by people familiar  
with MacPorts before the final release is made. Well, after a year's  
worth of changes we're going to need some release candidates before  
the final release anyway.

For the next release, I think we need version 1.7.0, not 1.6.1,  
because there are countless new features and a year's worth of bug  
fixes. That much work deserves more than just a bugfix version number  
increase. That means we release from trunk, not the 1.6 branch. A  
concern of mine is that the 1.6 branch contains some work that was  
done only there and not on trunk. I believe some of it was done on  
trunk in a different way, but I don't know if all changes from the  
1.6 branch got put in trunk. Someone needs to figure out whether it  
was, and if not, identify what needs to be ported from 1.6 to trunk.  
Ideally that would happen before a 1.7.0 release.