[Python-Dev] Regular scheduled releases (was: Continuing 2.x) (original) (raw)

Nick Coghlan ncoghlan at gmail.com
Sat Oct 30 05:22:10 CEST 2010

On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 7:39 AM, Dirkjan Ochtman <dirkjan at ochtman.nl> wrote:

That's an average of 4 (if you include .4) or 4.5 months (PEP 6 specifies 6 months, but some of the parts seem outdated). I think releasing each month might be a bit ambitious, but it would be great to drive down the release interval towards 2-3 months instead of 4-5.

Ultimately, the frequency of releases comes down to the burden on the release manager and the folks that build the binary installers. Any given RM is usually only responsible for one or two branches, but the same two people (Martin and Ronald) typically build the Windows and Mac OS X binaries for all of them. So if you add 2.6 and 3.1 together, as well as the releases for 2.7 and 3.2 development, I think you'll find releases happening a lot more often than an average of 1 every 4 months.

I suspect the most significant thing that needs to be done in making more regular bug fix releases possible is solid, reliable automated creation of Windows and Mac OS X binaries. We also need to consider the impact on downstream - switching to a new compiler or interpreter version generally has a much higher chance of breaking things than switching to a new version of almost any other software development tool.

Cheers, Nick.

-- Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia

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