[Zope3-dev] Zope 3 release planning

[Martijn Faassen]

Garrett Smith wrote:
> Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
>>Martijn Faassen wrote:
>>
>>>"Release early, release often" -- Zope 3 is missing out on a lot of
>>>opportunities for open source contributions here. People are not
>>>going to be attracted to the Zope 3 platform with only a single
>>>release out and nothing else in sight. 
> 
> 
> I see the trunk as Zope's 'release early and often' strategy. I think
> this is a smart, pracitcal way to get new features into people's hands
> (early and often) without incurring the overhead of a formal release.

*Deploying* software developed against the trunk version is a recipe for 
maintenance problems. If I install the trunk at some customer, and then 
install the trunk later on at another customer, and then install my 
software that depends on features (or bugs) that are in trunk 1 but 
aren't in trunk 2, I have a problem.

I can make the same arguments for development. If you have a 
multi-person development team, I definitely prefer them all working 
against the exact same version of software, so we don't get too many 
"Weird, it works on my machine" problems.

Let's please not think that Zope 3 is somehow different from other open 
source projects and that therefore it doesn't need regular releases.

> The fact that so many Zope 3 developers use the trunk suggests that the
> community sees it this way. 

I think the Zope 3 developers currently don't have any other option 
(besides using Zope X3.0, which is what I'm using), so I doubt that is 
an indication of the community's perspective. I also think there can be 
quite a few more Zope 3 developers that aren't present as they don't 
feel like developing against the trunk. :)

One problem with developing against the trunk is that you know you can't 
release it. What am I to tell people? "Check out the trunk of Zope 3 to 
try this great software!" doesn't sound very good to me. The audience is 
rather small.

If the trunk has well established release dates and the project has a 
reputation for keeping those release dates, then it becomes a lot more 
interesting to develop against the trunk, which will make it more likely 
for people to contribute to the trunk as well.

Regards,

Martijn