[IAEP] Topics & deliverables from Marketing IRC meeting 03-03-2009: Sugar 8.4 launch date set!

[Morgan Collett]

On Fri, Mar 6, 2009 at 09:55, Sean DALY <sdaly.be at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, not nitpicking!
>
> Let's be clear what the version number is.
>
> I have seen both "0.84" and "8.4" and "8.4.0" and "8.4.1", and for the
> nontechnical user the "build" number can be confusing.
>
> Which is it?

0.84.0. It's a release of software, not a build.

The most confusion happened when OLPC released an operating system
release called 8.2.0 containing a Sugar release version 0.82.0. We
subsequently had a Sugar release 0.82.1, and OLPC's still working
towards an 8.2.1 operating system release. The 8's and 2's and 0's had
nothing to do with each other and it was an unfortunate coincidence...
OLPC's numbering scheme had the 8 referring to 2008, the 2 being the
second major release of the year, and the 0 (or 1) as a minor version
number, with 8.2.1 intended to be a minor bugfix update to 8.2.0. (Now
with 9.1.0 abandoned, 8.2.1 has grown in scope.)

Roughly a year ago or so, Sugar packages had version numbers of
0.75.x, probably denoting roughly "three quarters finished" - since
version 1.0 is usually a significant milestone for a project, often
considered to be feature-complete. While 0.75.x was stabilizing for an
OLPC release, new features were landed on a separate branch and
released as 0.79.x releases. Only features approved by OLPC for
inclusion (due to the semi-code-freeze) were then incorporated in
0.75.x.

Since then, we had 0.81.x as a series of "unstable" or "developer"
releases - snapshots of code under active development which were not
particularly tested, which stabilized and led to the 0.82.0 stable
release. This had bugs, some of which were fixed in the 0.82.1 stable
release.

This set in motion a plan to have odd numbers (0.81.x, 0.83.x) as
unstable releases and even numbers (0.82.x, 0.84.x) as stable releases
- as various other Free Software projects also do.

If there were more developers, we could have continued support of this
stable release and produced an 0.82.2 stable release while working on
the 0.83.x unstable releases.

0.83.x unstable releases were produced, and once the feature freeze
occurred the emphasis was on stabilizing and bug fixing, leading to
the 0.84.0 stable release.

The plan right now seems to be to work on bug fixes for 0.84.0 leading
to an 0.84.1 stable release, which wouldn't have new features, just
bug fixes.

New features in the pipeline will land in the coming 0.85.x unstable
releases, leading to an 0.86.0 release in about 6 months' time.

Distributions are welcome to package the odd numbered unstable
releases in developer snapshots, alpha releases etc to provide  easier
testing of those milestones, but the releases most suitable for stable
distro releases are the stable Sugar releases.

Phew! I think there's an open spot on the Documentation Team for a
Biographer of the project...

Regards
Morgan