5.0 and or 4.8 (was Re: [development] Drupal x.x.0 freeze date)

[Bèr Kessels]

Let us not loose focus because we can reply with nice names and acronyms!

Op zondag 30 april 2006 15:23, schreef Khalid B:
> You have listed some good points about two parallel tracks for development.
>
> Here are some drawback.

I listed exactly those three, only that I mentioned them as two drawbacks, so 
let me re-clarify (if that was not a word, it is now).

> 1. Will be expensive (not only on development, but in terms of community
> resources, think documentation, support, ...etc. as well  as the obvious
> fragmentation of the development effort).

5.0 will be more of asandbox for at least half a year. 
Views module: Huge success. Without  proper docs for a long while. a) Its 
appealing: new, exciting, nice to be part-of. 
CCK: has lived as vapourware and in academical state for at least a year. Only 
last month JonBob (Jonathan Chaffer) made real documentation and end-user 
stuff. Why? We all could read+see the proposals, knew that its (for a big 
part) JonBob working on it, together with other Bright Brains, such as moshe 
and off course John VanDyk. We trusted their insight, more then we trusted 
any code or patches, because for a long while they were not there.

A patch that breaks everything can still get into 5.0, but in our "normal 
route" would need enourmous resource, because book.module is bitching, 
aggregator becomes broken beyond repair  etc. All that is of less importance 
when the pressure for a release is no longer there. 

My point?
Openess, 'freedom' (as in: get free way to do your thing to make Drupal 
better) has worked. Documentation, resources, etc are not only less important 
when working in such a "free" environment. We do not need a lot of resources 
other then those that watn to spend them on sucgh projects anyway!

> 2. Confusing (communication to prospective and present users, as well as
> the development community).

No. In contrary.
Everyone (involved and interested) knows that KDE 3.5 was a release with 
bugfixes, some new features and lots of cool and better stuff. But still all 
people know that KDE 4 is going to be Tha Bomb.

If we put it right, it is not at all hard to communicate that:
4.8 will be a release with more, better, nicer stuff then 4.7. That people 
should focus on that, for their sites.
5.0 ails to be a next generation CMS. is something to get very excited about, 
and to be invloeved in, but is nothing to deploy, yet.

That is less confusing then stuff like "sorry, 4.8 was supposed to release 
early 2007, but it is January 2008 now. If you want us to release soon, 
please review patches." and with all the plans I have heard around Drupal, 
this is IMO going to happen for sure. We cannot manage all this. So either we 
need (someone) to put an early halt to all the Big Plans, or we will get an 
even longer slip then 4.7. The stuff people are working on surpasses frms api 
in both complexity, and amount. By far.

> 3. Do we have to merge repositories at one point (4.8 branch to 5.0)? If
> not, then it is effectively maintenance on 4.7, with
> (possible/questionable) patch ports to 5.0.

No. I was clear about this in my post. If stuff is in 4.8 that is still 
important for 5.0 there will be resources and people to do that. Same vice 
versa. 

I gave examples: "After all: what good will "a small theming 
improvement on aggregator output" patch do in 5.0, if in 5.0 the "big theme 
overhaul to make all output structural, like fAPI" patch is already in?" 

> Having said that, point 1 may not be constrained by the development
> resource issue that it used to be, since we now have very capable and
> proven branch maintainers and commiters (Gerhard and Neil). In other words,
> this is not as much of a problem as it has been in the past where it was
> mainly Dries doing it all.

Yes. and I beleive that a 5.0 being more free, because it needs not focus on 
the next release, will only improve this more.

> Side point: I have stated before that 4.7 should have been 5.0, since
> we have significant APIs and functionality changes. The decision to stay
> with 4.7 and not call it 5.0 had good reasons (too late to call it
> something else).

Indeed true. This is why longhorn, KDE 4, Mac osx, or any other Huge And 
Complete Overhaul release has had its branch for ages. 
I beleive Drupal has reached (already beyond) the point that it needs such a 
"mayor overhaul branch".

Even if we give it some codename. IT does not matter. Point stands that having 
one pragmatic release (just improve and get new cutting edge stuff in) ASAP, 
and one academic (become the most and best CMF/S of the world) branch will do 
us a lot of good.

-- 
| Bèr Kessels | webschuur.com | website development |
| Jabber & Google Talk: ber at jabber.webschuur.com
| http://bler.webschuur.com | http://www.webschuur.com |


Heeft het gebruik van Sympal gevolgen voor de eigendomsrechten van het 
gepubliceerde materiaal?:
 
http://help.sympal.nl/heeft_het_gebruik_van_sympal_gevolgen_voor_de_eigendomsrechten_van_het_gepubliceerde_materiaal