[Koha-devel] Koha numbering

[Katrin Fischer]

Hi Mathieu,

you are right in that updating every half year is a lot of work, but the
good thing is, that you don't have to. We have libraries that are still
on 3.6.x now and we will probably update them directly to 3.12 sometime
this year.

The positive side on half year feature releases is that you can get to
use your sponsored enhancements quicker if you want to. Libraries don't
have to wait a full year worst case or even longer, if for whatever
reason their developments can't go into the very next release. As it
stands Koha changes a lot in short amounts of time. Our release notes
show that quite well and I think we should keep our cycle.

Translations are always a bit of a pain to do, that won't change with
different tools or different kinds of releases in my opinion. But the
bugfix releases don't introduce a lot of new strings. It's the big
releases that do and I think we wouldn't reduce work with longer release
cycles.


Katrin


Am 07.04.2013 10:27, schrieb Mathieu Saby:
> Hello
> Maybe you will not agree with me, but here is my *personal *opinion
> about release rythm : 6 month between each "major" release seems quite a
> short delay.
> In France we have libraries using 3.10 (I think only my library for the
> moment), 3.8, probably 3.6, 3.2 (with a lot of local changes).
> In some monthes, we will have libraries using 3.12, 3.10, 3.8 etc
> 
> For a library a 6 month rythm means updating 2 times Koha each year.
> Before and after each change, you need to test the new version, to train
> colleagues, to update documentation, to signal new bugs to your vendor
> if you have one... You can do that if you have a big team, and the help
> of a vendor. This is not the case of all libraries...
> It is also a problem for internationalization : translation teams need
> to maintain projects for 3 or 4 versions. With Pootle, it is not
> possible (how many languages with 100% strings translated for 3.10, 3.8
> and 3.6 ???). Even with an other system it will be very difficult and
> will take a lot of time.
> Finally, in terms of development : with the current system, we work on
> enhancements approximatly 4 months (before feature freeze) for each
> version. So 8 month in a year. With a rythm of a year, we could work for
> example 9 months on enhancements, and 3 on bugfixes and translations.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> M. Saby
> Rennes 2 university
> 
>