Richard, Dan and I have had a go at reorganising the tickets that made
up Pineapple Snow. In place of one release we have five. This should
allow us to make more frequent, more focused, and more reliable releases.
We are currently planning to make each release a month apart. The
released version of GroupServer will not lag very far behind what we have
on our development platforms, or what is used on OnlineGroups.Net. In
addition we will be able to better keep pace with the other libraries
that we depend on as they change.
The smaller releases will be more focused. For example, *Kulfi* deals
with many little errors that occur as a result of performing physical
delete operations in the database (rather than logical deletes). *Lemon*
*Ice* is focused on a new group homepage. *Tartufo* contains some
enhancements fixes to do with the profile pages. *Pineapple* *Snow*
still exists, and is focused on user-interface enhancements for posts
on the web.
The smaller releases should be more reliable because we will be making
smaller changes between each release, and they will be be tested more
frequently. Richard has a major focus on increasing the number of unit
tests in GroupServer; I am taking on the functional tests. The number
of tests will increase with every release.
We have renumbered all the releases. No release will be called
GroupServer 1.0. Instead we have stolen the scheme that Ubuntu uses:
the major number will be the *year*, while the minor number will be the
*month*. The next release should be this month, so it will be 10.09. The
next release will (hopefully) be 10.10.
The code-name also follows a pattern, albeit less defined. The name
is used to signify the architecture. Currently GroupServer uses Zope,
ZODB, and PostgreSQL. All releases that use this architecture are named
after a frozen treat of some kind: Cream Freeze, Semifreddo, Sundae,
Spaghettieis, Gelato, Kulfi, Lemon Ice, Baked Alaska, Tartufo, Pineapple
Snow, Soft Serve, Sorbet, Affogato, and Granita di Caffè con Panna are
the existing names. The full code-name for each release is a bit longer,
with extra text added to make the name more… peculiar. The name of
next release will be “Spaghettieis with a Wafer of Confusion”.
There are nebulous plans to switch to an architecture that is less tied
to Zope, and more flexible. It will use something combination of Python
WSGI, ZTK, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, and some other systems. The next series
of releases will be named after aperitifs: Port, Sherry and Ouzo are
the only named ones at the moment.
