[Zope3-dev] Zope X3.1? Ane rough feeling for release date?

[Stephan Richter]

On Monday 10 January 2005 13:25, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> >>http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture/RoadMap
> >>
> >>Well, December 2004 has come and passed. ;) Any ideas on how far away
> >>X3.1 could be?
> >>
> >>I'm just inquiring because I'm doing some work on Five, and I would like
> >>to move that work up past X3.0, because of some changes in Zope3 making
> >>that work much easier. It would feel MUCH nicer to do so if I knew X3.1
> >>was coming soon.
> >
> > It iwll take a while. There is currently no rush. I have been working on
> > some major, major changes that will take some time to stabilize and
> > ensure BBB for. I think it will not happen in the next 3 months (for the
> > final release).
>
> I don't want to be annoying and whine while I don't contribute, but what
> happened to:
>
> "Depending on community distributions, we are thinking about releasing
> X3.1 in December, 2004. This release will include several cleanups to
> the framework and feature the new Pluggable Authentication Service (PAS)
> and Workflow packages."
>
> (I assume 'distributions' needs to be 'contributions').

Yeah, my typo.

> I don't think we can say the *only* reason for this 3 month delay is
> lack of community contributions. Release planning has an effect on it.
> If you know you're going to release soon, you avoid landing huge changes
> just ahead of it, for instance.

Well, when I said December 2004 for a *alpha*, I also placed a bunch of 
conditions on it. One of them was that I have to be satisfied with the amount 
of new features and restructurings to warrant a release. The reason we cannot 
just make releases as we want to is that we do not have the man-power to 
support them.

Also, at the point I made that statement, Philipp was the one pushing for it 
and promising to do work. He has since then resigned largely from the Zope 3 
community to devote more time to his studies, girlfriend and other free-time 
activities. There is currently no one else pushing for a release.

> It's fine if the planning changes, but this planning seemed to have
> changed rather dramatically without anyone hearing about it until now.

At the time of writing the new release schedule, there were about 4-5 active 
developers: Fred, Jim, Philipp, Gustavo and me. Now we only have one, namely 
me, since Jim and Fred need to work on a customer project. So Jim only 
contributes to the new workflow engine, which is not a must for 3.1. 

And as a sole free contributor I simply pick the tasks I like best as well. So 
often Wiki updates stay behind. Even worse, I have my second qualifiers 
coming up and my wife pushes me to do contract work, so that even prolongs 
the process of getting work done.

> What went wrong with the planning?

Currently the community is far too small and fluctuating to make any reliable 
prediction. The to do list for 3.1 is set for a while now, so that's 
definitely not the problem. I can do as much planning as I want to, when 
people do not contribute to the things that have to be done.

> How can we prevent this kind of release slippage from happening again in the 
> future? 

Well, I think there are several options.

1. It would be really good, if someone could pay me at least for some of the 
time. ;-) Then my contributions would be more steady and I could keep track 
of necessary changes. I think, if some companies get together, this should be 
possible. It could ensure that (a) I keep the Wiki updated and everyone 
posted on changes and (b) I have the time to actually do releases and support 
them.

2. Companies interested in releases need to step up to make them happen. As 
Jim said before, we are willing to make a release for a company with a big 
deadline. The first such deadline will be the first pure Zope 3 project that 
will need a release in May, which seems to become the 3.1 target.

3. Companies, especially the ones relying on Z3 technologies already, need to 
set aside a little bit of time for one or two programmers to contribute. This 
way we will have a steady stream of contributions and planning will become 
much more predicatable and effective.

> I know part of the answer is "we need more community contributions", but
> those will also come more often if people know their contributions will
> be included in a release in the forseeable future so they can plan
> deployment. That this is happening is clear from Lennart's question. So
> please come up with additional answers :)

I tried to. :-) I know they are not much better, but I cannot help it.

> I'll again mention time based releases and their merits. Could we go at
> least a bit more time-based with Zope 3?

I totally agree. I hope you understand my situation as well. 

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training