4.8-RELEASE vs SA-03:07

[Andy Sparrow]

> On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 06:21:10PM -0800, Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 06:12:44PM -0800, Marcel Moolenaar wrote:
> > 
> > > I think this does not automaticly follow. If you use the -RC label for
> > > identifying the release when it's in a state of final QA and not to
> > > identify the release when it's in -ALPHA or -BETA state, then you avoid
> > > using the -RELEASE label when it's still possible that tags slide.
> > 
> > And what about the last-minute (but easily fixed) bug that is
> > discovered after the -RELEASE tag goes down, whenever that happens in
> > the process?  Either you slide the tag to fix the bug or you don't.
> > That's what the original poster was talking about.
> > 
> > Kris
> 
> Isn't this much fuzz for nothing, really? All there is to it is
> wait for the "Release Officer" to announce that 4.8 i RELEASED.
> 
> Then it is Released.

Yes.

I don't really understand why the Release Engineering is done the way it 
is. When I was releasing commercial software, I'd simply lock and tag 
the tree with a unique, temporary, label, check out a clean tree against 
that label, unlock the tree and build and package the software.

If the build subsequently passed QA, I laid down another label based on 
the one used to check out the passing build. All the temporary build 
tags would get removed automatically anyway when they were more than a 
few days old. You just had to lay down additional tags for "milestones" 
that you wanted to permanently get back to (e.g. pre-releases, various 
betas, code forks etc.)

If you're only building releases from source trees checked out against 
labels, there's little need to keep the tree frozen for weeks at a time, 
it seems to me.

Cheers,

AS