[Freeciv-Dev] CVS Development branch

[Davide Pagnin <nightmare@xxxxxxxxxx>]

        Hi all!

I'm sure that this argument has been touched many times, but I want to
open again a debate (well, I hope ...) and see if there is any chances
to change what has been the development process of freeciv in the past 2
years or so.

Now that we have a 1.13.0 stable release, there is a bunch of patches
waiting for inclusion that will add some new features to freeciv and
perhaps there will be some bugfixes to the old code (not only to the new
features).

I propose to take the decision to maintain two branches of the CVS:

1. Main development branch, named 1.14.x-devel, and every time a new
feature is added, increment the patch level 1.14.(x+1)-devel and so on.

2. Main stable branch, named 1.13.x, and release it every time that a
number of bugfixes are introduced.

I think that this is not overkill for freeciv, as this would produce
only a little more work for the maintainers, perhaps only one of them
can be responsible to apply bugfixes patch to the stable branch.

Obviously, ONLY BUGFIXES, could be applied to the stable branch, and any
new bug or bad behaviour that a patch introduce to the stable branch,
has to be reversed.

After 3 month of this development process, we can enter e new
stabilization process, creating a new stable target (at this moment,
1.15.x) and working on betas of the new stable, for say, 1 month, (NOTE:
no development at this time for any other branch and no new features
introduced), after this, the release of a new stable and the opening of
a new development branch (say 1.16.x-devel).

Before stopping the maintenance of the previous stable, the majority of
the developers has to be for it. 
In this way, hopefully there will be no drop of stability ...

Well, this is more or less, my proposal. 

Now that the release has come, perhaps more people are willing to talk
about such things.

I will be grateful to every one that will add a comment on this, and I
hope that Raimar, Per, Tony and Mike will drop a word on this.

Not to mention all other active developer of freeciv. 

        Thanks in advance

        Davide