[Python-Dev] Community buildbots (was Re: User's complaints)

[Neal Norwitz]

On 7/13/06, skip at pobox.com <skip at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>     Fred> It feels like the release cycle from alpha1 to final has gotten
>     Fred> increasingly rushed.

I think that's just because you are getting older and time goes by
faster the less time you've got left. :-)  It seems to be going quite
quick, but I'm not so sure it's really different.

> Same here.  I believe there was some shortening of the 2.5 release cycle two
> or three months ago.  I don't recall why or by how much, but I think the
> acceleration has resulted in a lot of the "can't we please squeeze this one
> little change in?" that's been happening.  Shortening a micro release a bit
> seems reasonably easy to accommodate, but since minor releases occur so
> infrequently, I think it would be better to stretch them out if necessary.

Not exactly.  The PEP was created Feb 7 (r42266) with a very relaxed
schedule to allow enough time for ssize_t branch to solidify.  Martin
was ready sooner, so on Feb 26 (r42577) sped up the schedule to
something more reasonable:

-    alpha 1: April 1, 2006 [planned]
-    alpha 2: April 29, 2006 [planned]
-    beta 1:  June 24, 2006 [planned]
-    beta 2:  July 15, 2006 [planned]
-    rc 1:    August 5, 2006 [planned]
-    final:   August 19, 2006 [planned]

The current schedule is:

+    alpha 1: April 5, 2006 [completed]
+    alpha 2: April 27, 2006 [completed]
+    beta 1:  June 20, 2006 [completed]
+    beta 2:  July 11, 2006 [completed]
+    rc 1:    August 1, 2006 [planned]
+    final:   August 8, 2006 [planned]

So beta1 was 4 days earlier than the date set at the end of Feb.  The
first beta was  about 19 months after 2.4 was released if I'm counting
correctly.  In 2.4 beta1 to release was 1.5 months.  For 2.5 it is
about the same.  The total 2.4 schedule (from a1 to release) was 4.5
months which included 3 alphas.  For 2.5 we only had 2 alphas and the
total schedule is just over 4 months.  So 2.5 is just a little faster.
 But 2.5 has had a ton more testing than any previous released due to
the buildbots, not to mention Coverity and now Klocwork.

I definitely pushed the schedule, but I don't think it was really all
that different from in the past.

Given that several people here think we should lengthen the schedule
in some way, I suspect we will do something.  I'm not really against
it, but I don't think it will provide much benefit either.  A few more
bugs will be fixed since we have more time.  What I think might really
make a difference if we could leverage the buildbots and copy the
builds (especially WIndows) up to python.org and make them available
for download.  That might make it easier for people to try stuff out.

n