Re: [PROPOSAL] Going forward with Maven 2.x releases

>
> On 26/08/2008, at 6:44 AM, John Casey wrote:
>
>> To start, I'd personally prefer to see the code we current have in the
>> release process designated as 2.1.0. It's seen a lot of change to the
>> internal implementations, and while we've gone to great lengths to ensure
>> it's functionally compatible with 2.0.x, it contains a fairly risky level of
>> change for a revision release. This means that the 2.0.x branch would be
>> rolled back to the 2.0.9 release, and we'd proceed toward a 2.0.10 that
>> fixes the worst of the regressions with a minimal of code change. At that
>> point, I'd prefer to see 2.0.x go into end-of-life mode soon, with 2.1 and
>> later replacing it.
>
> +1
>
>>
>>
>> From there, I'd propose that we make a plan. I think we have a long list
>> of features we'd like to implement and other features we'd really like to
>> reimplement. No doubt each of us has his/her favorites, but what I'd like to
>> suggest is using the survey tool we used for the plugin priorities to come
>> up with a ordered set of priorities for the features we want to include.
>> Then, we can chop that list up (maybe every fourth feature), and call them
>> 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, etc. At this point, 2.1 would be a baseline that is as near
>> as possible to perfect compatibility with 2.0.x, and 2.1.1 might fix
>> regressions in that code until we have the agreed-upon features for 2.2
>> done.
>
> +1 to the approach. I like the idea of having a clear objective for when it
> is "done". I think we could do milestone/beta releases along the way to get
> some feedback on the new features.
>
> I would lean towards still doing that for 2.1: make the current 2.0.10 code
> a milestone/beta release to see how it goes in the wild as is (I believe
> these will still get reasonable exposure), and pick off 3 or 4 important
> features to include for the final release. However, if consensus is to just
> go as is for 2.1 and immediately move to 2.2 that's fine with me too.
>
> I say this because we basically already have implementations for reactor
> changes, pgp security, and parallel downloads, for example. I'm watching the
> secure passwords thing with keen interest as well, and I know Ralph has
> something in mind I think for MNG-612 which is the most voted for feature -
> so these could be done in a managable fashion in a short amount of time to
> have a fairly compelling upgrade release. About the only other thing I'd add
> to that is a review of what behaviour we want to deprecate so we can start
> getting it out in subsequent versions, and move all other features to 2.2+.
>
>> In case you're concerned about who's going to drive the items on this
>> list, my own feeling is that it needs to capture the sense of the
>> development community. To that end, the survey should be conducted among
>> developers, without direct input from users. However, each developer should
>> be acting in the interests of the user community at least part of the time,
>> so we need to focus on balancing the cool with the useful to make sure our
>> releases are relevant to users.
>
> +1, I'm happy with starting to encourage JIRA voting as the way to guide
> features that are in demand by users.
>
>> Of course, it also means that all of us will sometimes have to be patient
>> for the feature near and dear to our hearts to come up in the release plan,
>> and help get the other things out of the way first. However, I think this
>> could help us unify a lot of the different directions we all seem to be
>> heading WRT Maven's core, and maybe keep things moving forward at a steady
>> pace.
>
> Need to be careful with this - I would say we choose the features that
> people are willing to work on. As long as someone is upfront about what they
> are going to do, it is done properly and we agree that it's good for Maven,
> we should have room to add things to the release. It's a balance - we don't
> want to get in the way of good work, but we don't want to lose focus either.
>
> I think it would be a non-issue if we have some clear objectives set out up
> front since the willing contributors are involved in both parts of the
> process. Common sense will dictate whether something is a good addition or a
> disruptive change at the time.
>
>> To get things started, we have a long list of proposals out here:
>>
>> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/All+Proposals
>>
>>
>> Also, from users, we have these:
>>
>> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVENUSER/User+Proposals
>>
>>
>> But I'm sure this is at most 10% of what people have in mind for Maven.
>> Maybe we can have a short discussion of things we need to be doing in the
>> relatively near term for the health of Maven, then cap that discussion and
>> turn it into a survey to help us consolidate priorities. Then, we can chop
>> them up into a release plan and get started.
>
> Sounds good. How about we open the permissions on the MAVEN space to
> everyone and move all the proposals into one place?
>
> Cheers,
> Brett
>
> --
> Brett Porter
> brett@...
> http://blogs.exist.com/bporter/
>
>
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