Re: 21.2.90 pretest, 21.3, 21.4...

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@is.elta.co.il>]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002, Juanma Barranquero wrote:

> > I explained elsewhere in this thread that mundane practical problems
> > caused this delay, in addition to real issues.  I'm sorry that I was
> > part of the reasons for the delay, but I do have a life.
> 
> If I´ve made it sound like I was looking for a culprit or disregarding
> in any way yours or anyone´s contribution or (sometimes huge) amount of
> work in this project, I´m really sorry.  It´s not so.

It's true that I sometimes take offense where others don't, but in this 
case, you have nothing to apologize for: your wording didn't come 
anywhere near any disregard.

I simply wanted to explain why the delay happened.  I truly _am_ sorry 
that my personal life interfered.

> > I'm sure everyone knows that the way to speed up things is to
> > volunteer to make them happen.
> 
> Yes, of course. But sometimes it´s not clear what can you volunteer for.

There are a few mundane tasks involved in a pretest: making the tarballs 
and xdelta's, testing and uploading them, tracking the reports by 
pretesters (like on which systems they built successfully, what 
outstanding bugs are still unsolved, etc.).  When there's a major 
modification in the manuals, there's typically a need to record what 
pages were reviewed and how many times, to ensure coverage.  Etc., etc.

> I alredy fix bugs I think I know how to fix, for example.

If we want more frequent releases from the stable branch, bugs on the 
branch should get priority, or at least there should be enough people 
working on them to ensure they are fixed almost immediately.

Ideally, there should be a new pretest once a week.  We are still very 
far from that goal, I think; anything that helps us move toward that is a 
welcome change.