[tei-council] Release Process

[Martin Holmes]

I think release notes and version information should be done at least a 
week before release. Since there will be no schema-affecting changes, 
there's no reason not to, and in both of the last two releases we've 
found typos in them at the very last minute, which slowed things down a 
bit. If the clock gets reset at some point, we'd have to change the dates.

Watching the release process yesterday made me think again about using 
git. If Council members could continue their schema-changing work in 
their own forks, leaving the trunk unchanged, during the two-week 
release period, we might have less instability. Then immediately after 
release, they could merge their branches and let Jinks have at them.

Cheers,
Martin

On 13-01-18 02:14 AM, James Cummings wrote:
> Hi Council,
>
> Several suggestions were made (on IRC) about the release process
> that we go through and how we might make it more robust, open,
> and manageable.
>
> Having a process where we freeze schema-changing commits and only
> correct prose/typos has served us well, but it has been suggested
> that we extend this and open it to the TEI community.
>
> How about this as a strawman proposal:
>
> 2 weeks before release:
> - Stop schema-affecting changes
> - Freeze development on stylesheets, roma, oxgarage, etc.
> - Proofread for stability/functioning of release
> - Proofread for typos, bad examples, missing prose, etc.
> - Only fix non-schema relating things
> - Version number fixed at this point
> - if something larger and release-blocking is discovered the
> clock resets to zero once the problem is solved.
>
> 1 week before release:
> - Stop any changes by Council except typos
> - Announce beta release on TEI-L and point them to
> lastSuccessfulArtifact on Jenkins
> - Accept and correct any minor typos by public
> - If anything more significant than a typo is raised that Council
> determines is release-blocking, the whole process is frozen and
> clock reset to zero once the problem is solved.
>
> 1 day before release:
> - Final release notes agreed.
> - Final date change
> - Then SVN frozen entirely
>
> Day of release:
> - No SVN changes, only release made
> - Testing of Roma and related systems after release made, but
> before announced.
> - Announce release
>
> Improvements?
>

-- 
Martin Holmes
mholmes at uvic.ca
UVic Humanities Computing and Media Centre