[sugar] Sugar and OLPC release processes

[David Farning]

On Tue, 2008-07-15 at 02:03 +0200, Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I discussed a bit with Michael how to integrate Sugar and OLPC release
> processes. I'm going to summarize the outcoming here.
> 
> * SugarLabs should try to schedule his release a few months before the
> OLPC release target date (something around 2-3 months). That will give
> us enough time to ensure everything is stable before we start
> integrating the new code in the OLPC distribution.

Is this lead time too great?  Longer lead times will give OPLC greater
stabilization time at the risk of delaying new features.  These delays
_may_ start to increase requests for feature freeze exceptions.  

> * Sugar developers employed by OLPC will work on OLPC release
> contracts for all the new features present in the new release.
> 
> * After the first stable release SugarLabs will keep releasing minor
> updates, which will include bug fixes and strings for the OLPC
> release.
> 
> * We should make an effort to develop all the features required as
> part of the unstable development cycle. Though there surely will be
> cases where OLPC will need changes outside the normal SugarLabs
> schedule. We will land these in a limited and controlled way both
> during the freeze periods and as part of the stable minor releases.
> 
> I think this is pretty solid. In particular releasing Sugar a few
> months before OLPC will help improving quality. It's really difficult
> to do unstable development and distribution work at the same time.
> 
> Marco

Sounds like a very good plan.
dfarning