Re: Release cycle length
Joshua D. Drake <jd@commandprompt.com>
From: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>
To: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>
Cc: Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>, PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Date: 2003-11-18T01:58:20Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Hello, Personally I am for long release cycles, at least for major releases. In fact as of 7.4 I think there should possibly be a slow down in releases with more incremental releases (minor releases) throughout the year. People are running their companies and lives off of PostgreSQL, they should be able to rely on a specific feature set, and support from the community for longer. Sincerely, Joshua Drake Peter Eisentraut wrote: >Neil Conway writes: > > > >>Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes: >> >> >>>The time from release 7.3 to release 7.4 was 355 days, an all-time >>>high. We really need to shorten that. >>> >>> >>Why is that? >> >> > >First, if you develop something today, the first time users would >realistically get a hand at it would be January 2005. Do you want that? >Don't you want people to use your code? We fix problems, but people must >wait a year for the fix? > >Second, the longer a release cycle, the more problems amass. People just >forget what they were doing in the beginning, no one is around to fix the >problems introduced earlier, no one remembers anything when it comes time >to write release notes. The longer you develop, the more parallel efforts >are underway, and it becomes impossible to synchronize them to a release >date. People are not encouraged to provide small, well-thought-out, >modular improvements. Instead, they break everything open and worry about >it later. At the end, it's always a rush to close these holes. > >Altogether, it's a loss for both developers and users. > > > -- Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting. +1-503-222-2783 - jd@commandprompt.com - http://www.commandprompt.com Editor-N-Chief - PostgreSQl.Org - http://www.postgresql.org