Re: 8.5 release timetable, again

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 3:56 PM, Alvaro
Herrera<alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Robert Haas escribió:
>> What I want to do is address the concern about too much of any given
>> year being consumed by beta and CommitFest.  I'm not sure I know how
>> to do that though.
>
> How much time were we in beta?  I thought most time was spent trying to
> get to beta in the first place.

[ looks ]

The final CommitFest began November 11, 2008. It closed March 25,
2009 (+ 144 days). Beta1 was released April 15, 2009 (+ 21 days).
8.4.0 was released July 1, 2009 (+ 77 days). The first CommitFest for
8.5 began on July 15, 2009 (+ 14 days).

http://www.postgresql.org/about/news.1074
http://wiki.postgresql.org/index.php?title=CommitFest_2008-11&action=history
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release-8-4.html

In total, the tree was closed for 256 days, or 8.5 months, of which
the final CommitFest accounted for approximately 56%. Had we closed
the final CommitFest in 30 days rather than 144 days, and had
everything else taken the same amount of time, the release would have
occurred on March 9th and the first CommitFest for 8.5 would have
started on March 23rd.

Hmm... maybe that's not actually that bad. If we stuck to a similar
schedule for 8.5, but with a timely last CF, then we'd have either (3
CF):

2009-11-15 Final CommitFest Begins
2009-12-15 Final CommitFest Ends
2010-01-05 Beta
2010-03-23 Release
2010-04-06 First CommitFest for 8.6 Begins

Or (4 CF):

2010-01-15 Final CommitFest Begins
2010-02-15 Final CommitFest Ends
2010-03-08 Beta
2010-05-24 Release
2010-06-07 First CommitFest for 8.6 Begins

Of course I don't think we'd actually need to start a CommitFest quite
as quickly as we did this time, because with a shorter release cycle
there ought to be a lot less patches already accumulated by the time
we release, especially if there are clearly defined tasks for
developers to do during the beta period. On the other hand, 8.4beta
was arguably too short, since we missed some serious problems, so the
picture above may be a bit too rosy.

...Robert