Hi all,
Now that GSoC projects are finished and the code has had time to stabilize, it seems a good time to get the 0.46 release moving ahead. With Gutsy released, I finally have some time to contribute towards Inkscape release work, and will help try to get efforts organized.
I'd like to propose the following release plan, based roughly on the 0.45 plan. Let me know if there's anything missing.
1. Open development.
2. Chill. Development focuses on wrapping up. Identify 'make distcheck' issues Triage bug reports Run an About Screen contest First draft of Release Notes. Update tutorials and other docs
3. Frost. Most development complete. Release Notes should be >90% filled in. Bug Hunt: 500 points Post inkscape-0.46-alpha.tar.gz
4. Feature Freeze. No further development work. Disable features that can't be finished in time Focus on critical bug fixing. Finalize all tutorials, docs, etc. Finalize all extensions Translators create translations. Inkscape must pass 'make distcheck' Post inkscape-0.46-beta.tar.gz
5. Hard freeze. Only release wardens can commit to mainline. No further string changes Focus on release-critical bug fixing. Finalize translations, release notes, etc. Packagers test creating pkgs of the -beta release Post inkscape-0.46-rc1.tar.gz
6. Branch. Establish the Stable Branch for release Complete any late-late-late work. Final verification of packaging, release notes, docs, etc. Publish more release candidates until ready for release. Plan 0.46.1+ release(s), if needed
7. Release. Post inkscape-0.46.tar.gz Post packages Post official announcements
8. Open development.
I'm sort of thinking for this release we ought to plan on establishing a stable branch much earlier than we've done before, and maintain split devel / stable branches for a bit (maybe a couple months). I think that'd allow us to spend much more time than usual getting things release-worthy, without too heavily impacting people who wish to keep doing development work.
We'll have a bunch of interesting random tasks (mostly non-coding) to do to get the release polished up and ready to go. Are you interested in participating in the release team? Let me know!
Bryce