Release Cycle to low!

[Ali Akcaagac <aliakc web de>]

On Thu, 2004-02-19 at 03:09 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> GNOME Development Release 2.5.5

Sorry for this little compliant but don't you think you are throwing the
releases like warm cakes now ? The 2.5.4 release is still quite HOT and
yet 2.5.5 shows up 4 days after 2.5.4 ?

I think you should give people a break and have them breathe for a
while. I mean when you go and release GNOME every say 2-3 weeks then
it's enough time for people to compile the released Tarballs, test them
and do serious bugreports.

People do complain now because 'after a few days of painful compiling'
they now got 2.5.4 compiled and were happy that they are somehow on the
bleeding edge, they now realize that their NEW GNOME which they spent so
much time into is old again.

Well one can easily argue that the 'normal user' don't compile
testreleases (as this was raised some mins in the #gnome-de IRC channel)
but then the question from my side would be to whom are these released
Tarballs meant if not the ordinary public ? This is a bit different if
we update GNOME once per week with CVS and compile a new version out of
it (what developers tend to do, so they always have the new stuff) or if
you release Tarballs in really short cycles.

Assuming this:
Now people start to test GNOME 2.5.4 find some bugs and report them to
b.g.o and immediately they get told to update to 2.5.5 because chances
are that they are fixed already. Hard to tell this to someone who just
spent a couple of days getting 2.5.4 running halfway - who now needs to
yet go through the pain of compiling 2.5.5 again and once done realizing
that 2.5.6 is out yet 4 days after that.

Well I do believe my explaination lacks in some areas but I do believe
that the one or other got the key message. I would like to ask whether
the release cycle can be kept in a normal state say all 3-4 weeks
otherwise it doesn't make sense pressing the developers to release
Tarballs which no one can really test because of short release cycles.