Release process thoughts

[Lars Clausen <lrclause cs uiuc edu>]

Looking over the release mail, I agree with Alan that we should try to get
more frequent releases.  We have the "release early" thing down, but we
also need to "release often".  However, we should certainly avoid the
disasters of hasty releases in 0.86, 0.88.1, 0.90.  We should probably in
the future make a CVS branch when we start a release cycle, so development
can continue while a release is being tested.  While it will take a little
more effort to keep the two versions in reasonable sync, we cannot afford
to spend month and a half out of seven months just on release.  It may well
enough up with a release cycle almost continually in progress, as
improvements done during the previous cycle might be enough to start the
next cycle immediately.  It may be a good idea to have one person almost
permanently in charge of release handling.

-Lars

-- 
Lars Clausen (http://shasta.cs.uiuc.edu/~lrclause)| HĂ„rdgrim of Numenor
"I do not agree with a word that you say, but I   |----------------------------
will defend to the death your right to say it."   | Where are we going, and
    --Evelyn Beatrice Hall paraphrasing Voltaire  | what's with the handbasket?