[Python-Dev] Proposed schedule for Python 3.4 (original) (raw)

Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Thu Oct 4 03:52:39 CEST 2012

martin at v.loewis.de writes:

I wouldn't mind having alpha 1 in April 2013, and alpha 2 in October 2013. I share Larry's skepticism, and actually fear that it may confuse users (which find that they test something completely different from what gets released).

I don't really think you need to worry. The Mallory-style testers[1] who download early alphas generally don't have specific expectations that it will correspond to the eventual release in my experience.

I have little experience with testers who download alphas to get a head start on integration work, but I suppose Larry is right, you'll lose a few of those if an alpha is "too early". I suspect that those folks mostly listen to an internal clock, not so much to release announcements, and download the freshest release when they are ready to start that kind of work. Those who decide not to download alpha 1 because "it's too old/incomplete, I'll wait for alpha 2" will be a subset, I suspect a minority, of those ready to get an alpha for integration testing at any given time. OTOH, is it really that big a loss? If I'm right, they will get alpha 2.

In fact, you might find a larger than usual response from those folks for alpha 1 because Nick will be out advertising "these changes are big, guys, both you and we want testing early!" Except that unlike most advertising, Nick's pretty plausible. At least, that's Nick's main point for doing this experiment now as I understand it. (I gather he agrees with David about a trend to "continuous alpha", but that's a separate though related issue.)

Footnotes: [1] "Why did you download the alpha?" "Because it's there."

More information about the Python-Dev mailing list