Re: Why is CF 2011-11 still listed as "In Progress"?

On 01/16/2012 08:27 PM, Robert Haas wrote:
> the last two release cycles I've put huge amounts of energy
> into trying to get the release stable enough to release before July
> and August roll around and everybody disappears. It didn't work,
> either time. If that's not going to happen anyway, then there's not
> really much point in getting stressed about another week or two.

Adjusting that expectation is another side to pragmatism based on recent
history I think needs to be acknowledged, but is unlikely to be improved
on. 9.0 shipped on September 20. 9.1 shipped on September 11. If we
say the last CF of each release is unlikely to wrap up before early
March each year, that's 6 months of "settling" time between major
feature freeze and release. So far that seems to result in stable
releases to be proud of, on a predictable enough yearly schedule.
Trying to drop the settling time has been frustrating for you, difficult
to accomplish, and I'm unsure it's even necessary.

Yes, there are some users of PostgreSQL who feel the yearly release
cycle is too slow. As I was saying upthread, I don't see any similarly
complicated projects doing better whose QA hasn't suffered for it. Are
there any examples of serious database software that navigate the new
features vs. low bug count trade-off as well as PostgreSQL, while also
releasing more often?

The one thing that really wasn't acceptable was holding off all new
development during the entire freeze period. Branching 9.2 much
earlier, then adding the June CommitFest last year, seems to have
released a lot of the pressure there. Did it push back the 9.1 release
or drop its quality level? Those two things are not decoupled. I think
we'd need to look at "fixes backported to 9.1 after 9.2 was branched" to
see how much benefit there was to holding off release until September,
instead of the July/August time-frame you were pushing for. Could 9.1
have shipped in July and kept the same quality level? My guess is that
the additional delay had some value for smoking bugs out. Would have to
actually look at the commit history more closely to have an informed
opinion on that.

I find your tone during this thread a bit strange. I see the way you in
particular have pushed on formalizing the CommitFest process the last
few years to be a big success. I've been staring at the approaching
work left on 9.2, finding a successful track record that outlines a game
plan for what's left, even seeing enough data for rough metrics on how
long things should take. That's a huge step forward for everyone
compared to the state of things a few years ago, where the state of the
art was a patch queue in everyone's mailbox, and new submitters had no
idea when they'd get feedback. Your hoping that it was possible to get
releases out in the summer of each year hasn't worked out so far. I
know that was frustrating for you, but I certainly don't see that as a
failure; just something we've now seen enough feedback on to acknowledge
and accept as impractical. If the flood of last minute submissions
right before the freeze submission deadline takes 6 weeks to clear now,
that still seems a whole lot better than what I remember of 8.3 and 8.4
development.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services, and 24x7 Support www.2ndQuadrant.com