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To: "Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net>
Cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net>,
	"Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>,
	Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>,
	PostgreSQL Development <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Release cycle length
From: Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com>
In-Reply-To: <3FB988B8.1050904@zeut.net> (Matthew T. O'Connor's message of
	"Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:49:28 -0500")
References: <Pine.LNX.4.44.0311180329330.639-100000@peter.localdomain>
	<3FB988B8.1050904@zeut.net>
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 22:10:20 -0500
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"Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net> writes:
> So 7.4 took about 4.5 months to get from feature freeze to release.
> I think feature freeze is the important date that developers of new
> features need to concern themselves with.

Rather than the length of the release cycle, I think it's the length
of the beta cycle that we should focus on improving. IMHO, we should
try to make the beta process more efficient: sometimes I get the
impression that the beta process just drags on and on, without the
extra time resulting in a huge improvement in the reliability of the
.0 release (witness the fact that all the .0 releases I can remember
have had a *lot* of serious bugs in them -- we can't catch everything
of course, but I think there is definitely room for improvement).

That said, I'm not really sure how we can make better use of the beta
period. One obvious improvement would be making the beta announcements
more visible: the obscurity of the beta process on www.postgresql.org
for 7.4 was pretty ridiculous. Does anyone else have a suggestion on
what we can do to produce a more reliable .0 release in less time?

-Neil