[Development] Schedule for Qt 4.8.1

[Turunen Tuukka]

On 13.2.2012 18.32, "Thiago Macieira" <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:

>On segunda-feira, 13 de fevereiro de 2012 12.28.06, Turunen Tuukka wrote:
>> Hi All,
>> 
>> We would like to release next version of Qt Commercial 4.8 around
>>mid-March.
>> 
>> It would be really great if we can again sync the LGPL and Commercial
>> releases both in timing and content to the extent possible.
>> 
>> If we agree that mid-March is a good target time for the next patch
>>release,
>> we should have as much as possible all the fixes in by end of February.
>> Naturally a patch release will not have any new features, but there are
>> some fixes that we are very much targeting to be in 4.8.1 such as ones
>> needed for publishing apps in the Mac App Store.
>> 
>> Since 4.8 was moved to gerrit, we have been actively redoing our merge
>> requests, and quite much has already been merged into the 4.8 branch.
>
>I think that it's a worthy goal. Let's try to have that release in March
>then.


Excellent. As it is a patch release, I think it will be just fine that
everybody knows the timing, and can handle the fixes accordingly.

>
>After that, I'd like to see 4.8 move into a periodic release mode, either
>in 
>time or in number of changes.


For the patch releases there always needs to be the capability to issue
one quickly in case something urgent comes up (like a serious security
issue).

Having the patch releases strictly tied into some intervals, or amount of
fixes does not work well in my opinion. But I do agree that some criteria
should be agreed upon, so that it is easy to know when the time is right
for a release.

Then it should also be noted that 4.8 is a bit of a special case as the
last of the Qt 4 series. It needs a more patch releases than I think will
be needed for Qt 5 (with regular 6 months for the minor releases it should
be very easy to migrate between these).

I think good timing for the 4.8 patch releases would the roughly:

4.8.1 in mid-March 
4.8.2 in end-May
4.8.3 in end-September
4.8.3 in mid-January 2013

Which leads to about 3 month intervals, that should be suitable for
increasing the stability of this already mature base.

As said, we need to also see what makes sense content wise, and be
prepared for a quick release if something urgent comes up.

I am very happy to hear your feedback and thoughts on this. After the
discussion it would be good to update the wiki with jointly agreed release
plan for 4.8.

Yours,

		Tuukka