[Releasing] [Development] Starting preparations for Qt 5.1

[Turunen Tuukka]

On 18.3.2013 16.44, "Thiago Macieira" <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:

>On segunda-feira, 18 de março de 2013 14.36.41, Giuseppe D'Angelo wrote:
>> On 18 March 2013 14:22, Ahumada Sergio <Sergio.Ahumada at digia.com> wrote:
>> > About the tag, one could argue that making the tag (and alpha release)
>> > before or after the merge might be the same.
>> This is not only about making the 5.1.0-alpha1 tag. This is about not
>> breaking forward binary compatibility in stable unless extraordinary
>> circumstances. The branch guidelines imply that we should not merge
>> unless we are (almost) in beta quality, see
>> http://i.imgur.com/N1jVW.png (from
>> http://qt-project.org/wiki/Branch-Guidelines , 2nd picture).
>
>That was not my intention when I wrote that.
>
>"dev" is already in alpha state. As soon as we do the feature-freeze, we
>can 
>release the alpha and it should be fine. And Sergio is right: whether the
>tag 
>appears shortly before or shortly after the dev/stable does not make a
>difference.
>
>> We can declare dev frozen and not accept any new
>> significant/destabilizing feature, but I disagree on the point that we
>> should retarget small new features (pending, not yet +2d) to stable,
>
>dev doesn't freeze. The freezing of Qt 5.1 *is* the merge of dev into
>stable.
>
>> as well as getting the first round of API feedback (which could mean
>> API/ABI breaks) in stable. (That of course could still happen after a
>> beta released from -stable, but it would probably require much
>> stronger arguments in order to go through.)


So the 'Alpha' release is the state we are in at the time when merge to
stable has been successfully done?

How should we distribute the 'Alpha' release? Is it enough to tag and
announce it? Is there benefit in packaging it to source-only installer?

I think it would be really good not to start any kind maturation process
on different 'Alpha' releases, but rather concentrate on 'Beta' release,
i.e. having decently working set and release tested content in binary
installers. Furthermore, I would like to get first 'Beta' out as soon as
we can - without very long testing process before we can announce it to
exist - and make another 'Beta' if we think it is needed.


Yours,

		Tuukka