[Scummvm-devel] Release plans, once again

[Max Horn]

Yo folks,

just wanted to get some feedback on how we should proceed now, 
regarding releases... below my thoughts and ideas on this:


0.6.2 ???
=====
We could do a 0.6.2 release almost any time; various small and not so 
small fixes accumulated in the 0.6.x branch; a few more could be 
backported. Also, I might backport some of the File class changes to 
allow for more powerful extrapath handling (matching the capabilities 
of HEAD CVS), though that would be a bigger change, requiring some good 
testing.

I believe such a release could be made within the next 2-4 weeks. In a 
way,  the 0.6.x branch would become our rock-solid reference version 
:-)


0.7.0 (or 1.0?)
=====
The next major release would be either 0.7.0 or 1.0. I think going for 
1.0 would be really nice, but we should agree on what we want to have 
in for that "special" version number, and what can wait for later 1.x 
releases... So I tried to make a list of three categories of things I 
think we must do for our next release; need for a 1.x release; and 
finally, "bonus" stuff.

Musts
-----
- Testing testing testing! This is obvious, and would come late in the 
development circle
- Fixing the SCUMM regressions caused by my recent text rendering 
rewrite (see also bug #1010520)
- other engines may need changes ???
no other regressions are known to me right now -> we seem to be in a 
pretty good shape, actually!

Musts for 1.0
-------------
- Improved / new documentation (Ender?)
- Better multi CD support: the original engines can do CD swapping, we 
should be able to do that, too!
- Have all current ports ready
- Fix these bugs:
   #883415 (COMI: Guybrush appears above tomb)
   #858639 (GUI: aspect-ratio issue in launcher)
   #949355 (DC/COMI: crash on startup movie)
   #1009344 (LAUNCHER: Doesn't distinguish monkey and monkey1)

Would-be-nice
-------------
- Smooth-scrolling for V7 SCUMM games (see bug #629417)
- Improved GUI
- Working SAGA (but we can just as well disable it for the release if 
it's not yet ready)
- Return-to-menu (so that you can play another game)
- More official ports: X-Box (probably not possible due to legal 
reasons?), PS2, Symbian, ...
- Reactivate MorphOS port
- MP3 support on DC would be nice, but I guess it's too slow... ? 
Marcus?


This listing is probably not complete, please fill in what is missing. 
And there is room to argue about priorities, too, I guess :-)


Ideally, I envision us being ready for a release in 1-3 months, but 
latest for christmas (no, I actually mean christmas *2004* and not 
"some christmas in the future", you tricksters :-)

For this to work out, we shouldn't destabilize HEAD CVS much more in 
the near future. I know that Eugene is working on (or planning to work 
on) some nice overlay improvements; but maybe those should first be 
developed as a patch or on a development branch. Justification: while 
the changes will be nice, they are not at all needed for a good 
release; OTOH they have the potential to break ports and other stuff, 
Mind you, that's a perfectly normal thing; they'll stabilize 
eventually, of course, but I am not sure we want to delay our next 
release because of this.



Cheers,

Max