[Scummvm-devel] Proposed 1.8.0 release schedule

[John Willis]

Hi Eugene,

> It looks like everything we wanted to do for now is there, so I'd like to start the release cycle.

All seems very reasonable to me.

> The proposed schedule is:
> 
> Monday, February 1st: Announce release cycle start and testing. Feature freeze
> Sunday, February 7th: 1.8.0 branched
> Friday, February 19th: 1.8.0 tagged, uploading of platform builds start
> Friday, February 26th: Release announcement
> 
> Any adjustments? Is the schedule aggressive?

The schedule seems fine as long as the number of bugs is manageable but there is one thing I would like to raise for consideration.

For the last few releases ports have been slow to arrive, often long after the main release (I know I am as guilty as anyone). I wonder if there is merit on having a real push to get ports in for the release or at least get status reports on them before 1.8.0 is branched. A mail directly to maintainers maybe?

With a little luck and some willing maintainers maybe we can get unofficial 1.8.0 test builds out on blogs and whatnot for a wide range of ports on or just after the 7th branch use give that period till the 19th to get some user feedback from the various communities around the ports/devices.

It just strikes me that it would be a shame to push into another release if the ports fail to materialise. I guess it's the curse of a stable and well maintained codebase, a lot of the porters have no need to jump in very often but rot and regressions can still creep in and if we slipped a few weeks but got a raft of bug fixes for ports from some focused effort that is not all told a bad thing. Especially as we will be pushing new platform enhanced ports for devices like the RaspberryPi in this release (well I hope so anyway).

Regards,

John