[josm-dev] JOSM-Tested

Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Sun Jun 13 17:49:16 BST 2010


Matthias Julius writes:
 > I am not saying we should hold development until all translations are
 > complete.  I would just like to give translators a chance to get their
 > translation into a released JOSM.

JOSM has never been released.

Or, to put it another way, the JOSM release process is broken.  JOSM
is never released. People are simply told that a certain SVN version
is better than other versions, and that version gets compiled for
them.  That's IT.  As a former release manager for several projects,
this frustrates the bejeezus out of me.

"JOSM is under constant development" is not a substitute for having
releases.  EVERYBODY works on their open source project every day.
Don't think you're so special that you don't have to release code.

So, if JOSM had a standard release process, then the developers would
confer amongst themselves to decide if there are any major changes
underway.  If not, and the code is working reasonably well, then you
fork it off into a release version and a development version.

The clock starts ticking.  Translators are told "Please check your
translation".  Users are told "Please download and test this".
Contributors are told "Check the documentation and bug reports."
Developers keep working, but as they fix bugs, they check them into
both the release version and the development version.

This works.  It's a pain, but it works.  You have to have somebody who
acts as a release manager.  They have to be willing to prod people
into action, to follow up, to make the announcements everywhere, to
check and double-check.  If you don't do this, then you don't have a
project.  You just have code.

Just as an extra thought, Mark Shuttleworth is trying to push open
source folks into coordinating releases by date rather than by
feature completion.  Makes it MUCH easier for users because they get a
big chunk of code, all of which is compatible with the other chunks
and all of it is the latest and greatest.  Anybody know what version
of JOSM is in Ubuntu right now?

And if we don't have a user focus, then we have no focus at all.
NONE.  ZERO.  ZIPPO.  NIL.  NADA.  Why am I so adament?  Because
except for the few projects we contribute to, WE ARE ALL USERS.
Anybody here hacked on the Linux kernel?  gcc? gtk? java? X? gpsd?
Maybe you've contributed a little bit, but for the most part, for most
things, we choose to be users.

Drop by drop, the mill is turned, but if we don't make sure that OUR
drop is the finest, the best, the most rounded drop ever, why should
anybody else?

-- 
--my blog is at    http://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
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