[Koha-devel] A case against our release dates

Fri Jun 2 02:14:48 CEST 2023

I think that it never hurts to review an established tradition!

In the southern hemisphere, I often catch up on a lot of work in December as many clients go on holiday early, and then I have my summer holidays in January. In April, I’ll take the latest point release of the November version (e.g. XX.11.03), and base local work off that, since it’s new but not *too new* (ie buggy). 

If the community did releases in February/March and August/September… I’d probably use the August/September release as my local code base for February-April since February/March would be “too new”/bleeding edge for me. 

Of course, August/September is right after northern hemisphere summer holidays… which might mean it’s a smaller release or it’s less stable as it has fewer eyes on it… 

And if the release was in February/March, would Hackfest be about setting the path for the next cycle, or would it be fixing all the bugs in the release that just came out a few weeks earlier?

Would December Christmas holidays negatively impact a February/March release?

Maybe it’s just human nature to leave big changes too close to the release date? We always think there will be lots of time, and then we rush to do things at the last minute? 

In any case, I think it’s worthwhile reviewing what we’re doing.

David Cook

Senior Software Engineer

Prosentient Systems

Suite 7.03

6a Glen St

Milsons Point NSW 2061

Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899

Online: 02 8005 0595

From: Koha-devel <koha-devel-bounces at lists.koha-community.org> On Behalf Of Tomas Cohen Arazi
Sent: Friday, 2 June 2023 1:52 AM
To: Philippe Blouin <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com>
Cc: koha-devel <koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] A case against our release dates

My personal feeling is we should have a release right before the hackfest. So the hackfest sets the path for the next cycle. That could mean moving the hackfest a couple a bit later too

Add for the second part of the year, I'm not sure yet. I just have the perception everyone is out in the months we are expected to do the bigger changes, and we end up doing them close to the release date.

El jue, 1 jun 2023 12:46, Philippe Blouin <philippe.blouin at inlibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inlibro.com> > escribió:

Of course I'm coming with my northern hemisphere perspective, and have no horse in the race really as being far from RM, but I always thought those dates were the best available.

Seems earlier (04, april) makes it closer to the hackfest you referred.  Later makes it closer to summer holidays.

Were you considering breaking the equal split in time, having a small and a big release each year?  November for the big, and march for the small, the hackfest starting the next cycle ?  Thinking outside the box...

Philippe Blouin,
Directeur de la technologie

Tél.  : (833) 465-4276, poste 230
philippe.blouin at inLibro.com <mailto:philippe.blouin at inLibro.com>  

inLibro | pour esprit libre | www.inLibro.com <http://www.inLibro.com>  

On 2023-06-01 07:35, Tomas Cohen Arazi wrote:

Hi all. Having served as Release Manager for the project a couple times, I'd like to ask y'all to think about the dates we've chosen and have stuck to the last few years for our releases. 

I know they are somehow aligned with our regular yearly meetings, and one each semester. But my experience says:

- We all want to implement things we discuss in the Hackfest, but the release is too close. So we either push too late in the cycle, or need to cool down our brains/ideas for 'after the release in two months'.

- The other scenario, which I suffered a lot recently (and will soon) is summer holidays in the northern hemisphere: you're all out when we should be pushing the riskier things to have enough time to fix things, and we end up rushing things... on the last third of the cycle.

I don't have a proposal right now, but wanted to say my perception is the dates are not ideal as-is. And hear back from you all.

Cheers!

-- 

Tomás Cohen Arazi

Theke Solutions (http://theke.io <http://theke.io/> )
✆ +54 9351 3513384
GPG: B2F3C15F

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