On Tue, 2012-12-04 at 13:42 -0800, Josh Andler wrote:
Hey all,
As of right now there hasn't really been much headway on the renderer related bugs we have which will block 0.49 as well as no action on the security bug stopping all releases.
We need the input of Krzysztof here. I've looked at some of the bugs. They require a good knowledge of how the rendering code works. I've managed to fix one but a fix for another of the bugs has introduced regressions elsewhere. Our choices are:
1. Go ahead with the release with the current rending bugs. 2. Delay the release until the bugs are fixed.
Which choice, I think, depends on if/when Krzysztof has the time (and desire) to help fix the bugs. The most important bug can't be properly fixed until Cairo introduces APIs to access the new Pixman downscaling routines. I can't see this happening for at least several months.
If we chose (1) then we should be in feature freeze. If we chose (2) then we can have a feature thaw (using a staging branch).
I thought we had a solution for the security bug.
0.49 should be in feature freeze at this point so we can work towards releasing it (you know, being friendly to translators and all), but other than our blocker bugs, people are still happily working on other features and items that they're wanting merged in (connector cleanup, "spiro live", etc).
Does anyone have any proposals on how we should move forward given the issues holding us back? Is it time that we move to using more branches as a project? One possible route would be to branch off 0.49 and allow open work to resume on trunk. Another is to create a "staging" branch that accepted merge proposals can all land in to get further testing. Note: After this experience, if things have known regressions, I feel strongly that they should not be merged into an actual "to be released" branch until those issue are resolved.
I am a bit worried about branching too early. I have found that working in branches can quickly lead to code rot. I had to spend several days getting my Mesh branch to work with trunk after not touching it for a couple of months (which is why it got checked in even though disabled by default).
I do like the idea of a staging branch and agree that if something has known regression it should not be added to trunk.
I'm open to suggestions. Development shouldn't stagnate, but at this point things aren't looking good with a feature freeze in place and no signs of our blockers getting taken care of.
Cheers, Josh
Tav