[tei-council] Order of release steps

[Stuart A. Yeates]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 3:56 AM, Gabriel BODARD
<gabriel.bodard at kcl.ac.uk> wrote:
> Maybe I'm missing something here (well, I certainly am, but sometimes
> naiveté can lead to valid suggestions) but is the answer not as simple
> as to freeze development, say 24 hours before starting the release, so
> that both the debian packages and all the other TEI materials can be
> generated in this stable time, then the release itself only involves
> changing the version numbers, waiting, testing, and pushing live?

This kind of thing is quite normal. Most software projects with a
formal release process have a period where only limited activity is
permitted. The exact nature of the permitted activity varies, but is
typically limited to translation work, textual changes (i.e. typo and
stylistic fixes), documentation updates and blocking bug fixes (i.e.
fixes to bugs which essentially break the system for large numbers of
users).

Personally I think a week where we were encouraged to proof-read
changed / updated / random sections of the standard might be a good
idea. Minor tweaks can be fixed live and bigger issues can be opened
as tickets (or fixed locally on people's machines but not committed
until after the release). With a week-long period we could even send a
call for proof-readers out to TEI-L.

cheers
stuart