Re: [HACKERS] Development Plans

Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
> I'm happy with the Zen approach of "there is no answer, the code comes
> when it is time" and "HACKERS list IS the process".
> Many people take the lack of a planned release date as clear indication
> that there is no strictly controlled release process, however-much I
> state that there really is one. In the absence of release dates, could
> we write down some indication of what the release process is, so
> everybody understands there is one.

What we do not have is a marketing-driven development process ;-).
We let the decisions be dictated by the maturity of the code, not by
an arbitrary predetermined release date. We do try to set a feature
freeze date in advance, but this has always been a pretty sloppy
cutoff --- the reason we set it in advance is just so that individual
developers can make their own plans about how much they think they can
get done in time for the next release. (Awhile back we didn't even do
that, but we found that we were forever slipping a release because first
one feature then another was "almost ready". We have learned that we
must be willing to say "too late for this release".) Once we are past
feature freeze, the beta schedule and release schedule are determined
entirely by Core's judgment about the state of the code.

I think most of the developers consider our process a strength, not
a weakness. It's certainly conditioned by the realities of an open-
source project in which most of the workers are part-time volunteers,
but it works well for us.

> Right now, I have zero idea which quarter, let alone which month feature
> freeze for 8.1 is in. I think it will be in 2005, but I'm not sure.

I'm sorry about the flux around the 8.1 schedule. It's been caused by
what is hopefully a one-time problem, namely uncertainty about how
we ought to deal with the ARC patent problem. Normally we would have
set a fairly definite feature freeze date before now.

> - what will be in release 8.1?

Whatever people get done. In a project where the work is done by
volunteers, it's just about pointless to imagine that we can predict it.
I can say what I'm hoping to work on personally, but how much of it will
get done I don't really know. Multiply that across a few dozen people
and what you have is pretty squishy.

I wouldn't mind seeing people be a little more vocal on the hackers list
about what they plan to be doing, just so that there's not duplication
of effort. But trying to assemble that into some sort of published
Master Plan sounds to me like just a recipe for making ourselves look
foolish when the Plan ends up having little relationship to reality.

> - What are you working towards? Performance? Stability? X?

Yes.

Bruce used to try to describe our releases as being oriented towards some
particular goal, but I always thought that these were after-the-fact
descriptions that had nothing to do with the real development process.
The truth is that individual developers work on what they feel like,
or find interesting, or in some cases get paid to do. But just as
there's not a master plan, there's not really some guiding vision that
in a particular release we are going to focus on X or Y or Z.

Note: the above is just my two cents and shouldn't be read as speaking
for Core. I think if you asked the other members of core you'd get
roughly similar answers, but each with his own spin.

regards, tom lane