Re: 8.5 development schedule

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e(at)gmx(dot)net> writes:
> Now that 8.4.0 is out the door, development for 8.5devel will be opened any
> day now. But we haven't discussed the development timeline so far. The core
> team has several proposals:
> [ details snipped ]

ISTM there are two critical decisions here: when's the first commitfest,
and when's the target release date? There's already been considerable
chatter about the first decision, but not much about the second.

I would like to propose aiming for a release around April/May 2010 ...
"in time for PGCon" if you like, but the main point is to have it out
before people start disappearing for summer break. We've already run
into problems with scheduling the 8.4 release because of that.

Or we could slide the target release date into the fall, but it seemed
to me that the spring release timeframe worked better (or would have if
we'd been able to meet it fully).

Of the schedules Peter mentioned, the only one that has a realistic
chance of releasing before June is the one with the final commitfest
starting Feb 1. Even then, we need to do something to prevent that
fest from expanding the way the last 8.4 fest did. The core committee
speculated a bit about instituting a rule like "major patches must
be submitted into a CF before the last one; the last one will only
accept resubmissions and small patches". But then you have to draw
the line between major and minor patches.

Actually, we did have a rule in the 8.4 cycle specifying that we
reserved the right to reject large patches during the final CF.
The problem was that in practice we failed to get up the gumption
to say "no" and make it stick. This has been a persistent project
management failing for many years, and I'm not sure how we change
that dynamic. There's always somebody cheerleading for the
latest-and-greatest patch...

regards, tom lane