[Freeciv-Dev] Re: It is feature freeze time

[Jason Short <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> It is time to start considering a release again.
...

> The beta test period will last for as long as it takes to weed out all
> release critical bugs. Or at least two weeks. Whichever takes longer.
I'd like to again suggest the use of CVS branches to minimize the 
downtime from a feature freeze.
There are two options:

- Fork off a "stable" branch.  Development can then proceed normally on 
the HEAD branch, while the stable one gets only bugfixes and the like. 
After the 1.13 (or whatever) release, this "stable" branch can be kept 
around and further bugfixes can be added to get to a 1.13.1 (or 
whatever) release.
- Fork off a "development" branch.  Development can then proceed 
normally on the dev branch, while the HEAD one is "stable" and gets only 
bugfixes and the like.  After the release it is still possible to create 
a "stable" branch to get bugfixes for a more stable update release.
Of course, if all maintainers are dedicated to working on the stable 
branch anyway, having a separate dev branch won't do too much good.  But 
in this case, the dev cycle for the stable branch will probably go 
quickly so everything will be fine.
The first system keeps a more straightforward development process; 
little work is needed to make sure that the "stable" branch remains 
untouched by normal development since you have to go out of your way to 
access it.  On the other hand, it does mean normal testers who use CVS 
will be playing on the development branch rather than the stable one 
(although that's what beta releases are for).
Anyway, these are my suggestions.  Mainly, I'd like to avoid a situation 
like what happened last release where development was halted for several 
months waiting on an "impending" release, but even for a two-week cycle 
creating a separate dev branch can allow the maintainers to continue to 
work on the code during the freeze.
jason