Re: Why is CF 2011-11 still listed as "In Progress"? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 10:00 PM, Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> On 01/16/2012 08:27 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
>> the last two release cycles I've put huge amounts of energy
>> into trying to get the release stable enough to release before July
>> and August roll around and everybody disappears.  It didn't work,
>> either time.  If that's not going to happen anyway, then there's not
>> really much point in getting stressed about another week or two.
>
> Adjusting that expectation is another side to pragmatism based on recent
> history I think needs to be acknowledged, but is unlikely to be improved on.
>  9.0 shipped on September 20.  9.1 shipped on September 11.  If we say the
> last CF of each release is unlikely to wrap up before early March each year,
> that's 6 months of "settling" time between major feature freeze and release.
>  So far that seems to result in stable releases to be proud of, on a
> predictable enough yearly schedule.  Trying to drop the settling time has
> been frustrating for you, difficult to accomplish, and I'm unsure it's even
> necessary.
>
> Yes, there are some users of PostgreSQL who feel the yearly release cycle is
> too slow.  As I was saying upthread, I don't see any similarly complicated
> projects doing better whose QA hasn't suffered for it.  Are there any
> examples of serious database software that navigate the new features vs. low
> bug count trade-off as well as PostgreSQL, while also releasing more often?

Totally agreed, on all of the above.

> The one thing that really wasn't acceptable was holding off all new
> development during the entire freeze period.  Branching 9.2 much earlier,
> then adding the June CommitFest last year, seems to have released a lot of
> the pressure there.

Also agreed.

> Did it push back the 9.1 release or drop its quality
> level?  Those two things are not decoupled.  I think we'd need to look at
> "fixes backported to 9.1 after 9.2 was branched" to see how much benefit
> there was to holding off release until September, instead of the July/August
> time-frame you were pushing for.  Could 9.1 have shipped in July and kept
> the same quality level?  My guess is that the additional delay had some
> value for smoking bugs out.  Would have to actually look at the commit
> history more closely to have an informed opinion on that.

Having looked over the commit history just now and thought about it a
bit, I don't think it either pushed back the 9.1 release or dropped
its quality level.  We were still fixing bugs over the summer, and
most of those wouldn't have been found any sooner if we haven't
branched.  Actually, I think 9.1 has probably been the most solid
release of the three I've been around long to remember; and maybe the
best feature set, too.

> I find your tone during this thread a bit strange.  I see the way you in
> particular have pushed on formalizing the CommitFest process the last few
> years to be a big success.

Thanks; I appreciate the sentiment.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company