1.9.1 checklist

1.9.1 checklist

[Andy Wingo]

Hey folks!

So, IMO we need to start pushing towards a release. How about getting a
1.9.1 out soon?

My feeling is that the current feature set in master is ready for a
release. We could just distcheck and that's that. (I tried distcheck
today at work, and it worked fine.)

But there are a few features that would be nice for 2.0, and some of
them would be nice for a 1.9.1.

Here are the features that I know of, in no particular order:

 BDW-GC:
   Looks really promising. All the code is there. Unknown implications,
   needs lots more testing. Needs to see at least one and hopefully two
   micro releases. (1.9.x)

 R6RS library support:
   No code yet. Julian? :-)

 R6RS-libs:
   Code is there, needs to be merged in and reviewed

 Syncase-in-boot-9:
   Code is there. I think it needs to go in ;-) But does have impacts
   wrt interpretation performance. Will need a couple micro releases.

 Unicode:
   Code shaping up, needs review and R6RS-libs. Unclear how much will be
   in shape for 2.0. Acceptable to ship with only the finished parts.

Basically at this point the features are coming together, and we need
testing and exposure to focus the hackpower on what's important.

My proposal would be a time-based release schedule. We can decide the
Guile 2.0 release date now, and three or four micro releases before
then. 

August in Europe is rather slow, and September people are catching up,
so I would propose October 15 for Guile 2.0. Then we can make four micro
releases until then, on the 15th of every month, pulling together
features as they are ready. We can have a one-week or 10-day freeze in
master preceding each release, for stabilization.

What think ye?

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Julian Graham]

Hi Andy,

>  R6RS library support:
>   No code yet. Julian? :-)

Yeah...  As I mentioned on IRC, I punted temporarily on that while I
was rewriting the parser for my CSS library.  Just yesterday, though,
I started doing some initial work towards adding version information
to modules and the module-use lists.  If we've got that, and we've got
your syncase work, and we're going with some restrictions on loading
multiple versions, then we're pretty close.  (The implementation I did
a few months ago was predicated on the assumption that we didn't want
to modify the core, but since people seem amenable to that, then it's
probably not worth keeping.)

The only major remaining thing is updating the module load system to
handle version, and the only reason we might want to hold off is to
see what happens to that SRFI-100 proposal you pointed me to [1],
which hasn't made it to "draft" status yet.  What do people think?


Regards,
Julian

[1] - https://code.launchpad.net/~derick-eddington/+junk/library-files

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Mike Gran]

> Hey folks!
> 
> So, IMO we need to start pushing towards a release. How about getting a
> 1.9.1 out soon?
> 
> Unicode:
>    Code shaping up, needs review and R6RS-libs. Unclear how much will be
>    in shape for 2.0. Acceptable to ship with only the finished parts.
> 

The big steps to hit a beta on Unicode are transcoders in R6RS I/O,
charsets that have more than 256 characters, some serious profiling,
and unicode-sized characters and strings in the virtual machine,
compiler, and REPL.  Also readline may need some work.

> Basically at this point the features are coming together, and we need
> testing and exposure to focus the hackpower on what's important.
> 
> My proposal would be a time-based release schedule. We can decide the
> Guile 2.0 release date now, and three or four micro releases before
> then. 

FWIW, I think the most imporant attribute of a 2.0 release is that it 
doesn't break the code by Guile's four big customers: Gnucash, 
GCC via Autogen,SND, and Lilypond.

-Mike Gran

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello Andy!

This all sounds like an excellent plan to me!

In practice, that would mean making the first release on June 15th,
right?

Ludo'.

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Neil Jerram]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> My proposal would be a time-based release schedule. We can decide the
> Guile 2.0 release date now, and three or four micro releases before
> then. 
>
> August in Europe is rather slow, and September people are catching up,
> so I would propose October 15 for Guile 2.0. Then we can make four micro
> releases until then, on the 15th of every month, pulling together
> features as they are ready. We can have a one-week or 10-day freeze in
> master preceding each release, for stabilization.
>
> What think ye?

Sounds great to me.  Before we get to 2.0, I'd like to have got
through some more fixing, and I'd also like to make sure we have
really good release notes: complete NEWS, information about any
changed or removed APIs, how to transition, and so on.  Plus the
better doc on Guile's mission that we've discussed.  I think those
things are all achievable by October 15th, so I'm happy with that
date.

As regards the mechanics of releasing: recently Ludovic has handled
that.  Will you be OK to continue doing the releases to Andy's
proposed schedule, Ludo; or Andy are you proposing to handle the
release process yourself instead?

Regards,
        Neil

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Neil Jerram]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:


> (I tried distcheck today at work, and it worked fine.)

That's curious.  It's failing at the moment for me (as I mentioned in
another email).  I guess my action to look into that failure then.

     Neil

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Ludovic Courtès]

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Hello!

Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:

> As regards the mechanics of releasing: recently Ludovic has handled
> that.  Will you be OK to continue doing the releases to Andy's
> proposed schedule, Ludo; or Andy are you proposing to handle the
> release process yourself instead?

FWIW, I'm happy to keep releasing the 1.8 series (and I think it's time
to think about 1.8.7).

For 2.0, though, I think it may be wiser to let Andy take care of it, if
he wants to: he's been more responsive than me, and he's the 2.x guy
after all.  ;-)  Andy: what do you think?

(I'm happy to take care of it if you can't or don't want to do it, but I
don't want to be a burden for you and the other people involved.)

Thanks,
Ludo'.

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Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Andy Wingo]

Hello!

On Thu 28 May 2009 15:01, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> For 2.0, though, I think it may be wiser to let Andy take care of it, if
> he wants to: he's been more responsive than me, and he's the 2.x guy
> after all.  ;-)  Andy: what do you think?
>
> (I'm happy to take care of it if you can't or don't want to do it, but I
> don't want to be a burden for you and the other people involved.)

To be honest, I'd rather not [have to] handle release mechanics -- while
I can do it, I would be more than happy for you to keep handling
releases, Ludovic.

Or perhaps we should share the burden? For this upcoming series of 1.9.x
releases, they come pretty frequently, and one of us might be out on
holiday or something for the actual release day. So maybe we can
coordinate together to determine who will handle individual releases.

What do you think?

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Andy Wingo]

On Wed 27 May 2009 01:48, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> This all sounds like an excellent plan to me!

Excellent!

<a-team>I love it when a plan comes together!</a-team>

> In practice, that would mean making the first release on June 15th,
> right?

Yes. We probably would need the longer freeze (of 10 days) to get the
docs and NEWS and things in shape for this one, meaning no new code
should go in between the 5th and the 15th, just testing and doc updates
and regression fixes. Sound good to you?

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Andy Wingo]

On Thu 28 May 2009 00:15, Neil Jerram <neil@ossau.uklinux.net> writes:

> Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:
>> (I tried distcheck today at work, and it worked fine.)
>
> That's curious.  It's failing at the moment for me (as I mentioned in
> another email).  I guess my action to look into that failure then.

Hm, is failing for me here at home though. Don't worry about it for now,
I'll see if I can fix it.

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi!

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> Yes. We probably would need the longer freeze (of 10 days) to get the
> docs and NEWS and things in shape for this one, meaning no new code
> should go in between the 5th and the 15th, just testing and doc updates
> and regression fixes. Sound good to you?

Yes, but...  it just occurred to me that I'll be away from the 2nd to
the 18th of June, so I probably won't commit new code, but I won't be
available either to make the actual release.  Unless we wait for a few
more days for this one.

Thanks,
Ludo'.

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Ludovic Courtès]

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> To be honest, I'd rather not [have to] handle release mechanics -- while
> I can do it, I would be more than happy for you to keep handling
> releases, Ludovic.

Fine with me.  I'll do my best to be available on the 14th-15th of each
month, then.

> Or perhaps we should share the burden? For this upcoming series of 1.9.x
> releases, they come pretty frequently, and one of us might be out on
> holiday or something for the actual release day. So maybe we can
> coordinate together to determine who will handle individual releases.

Agreed, and starting with the June 15th release.  :-)

Thanks,
Ludo'.

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> writes:

> Here are the features that I know of, in no particular order:
>
>  BDW-GC:
>    Looks really promising. All the code is there. Unknown implications,
>    needs lots more testing. Needs to see at least one and hopefully two
>    micro releases. (1.9.x)
>
>  R6RS library support:
>    No code yet. Julian? :-)
>
>  R6RS-libs:
>    Code is there, needs to be merged in and reviewed
>
>  Syncase-in-boot-9:
>    Code is there. I think it needs to go in ;-) But does have impacts
>    wrt interpretation performance. Will need a couple micro releases.
>
>  Unicode:
>    Code shaping up, needs review and R6RS-libs. Unclear how much will be
>    in shape for 2.0. Acceptable to ship with only the finished parts.

There's one more item:

  licensing:
    Switch to LGPLv3+, as was decided some time ago.  Check the license
    headers of new code and code inherited from Guile-VM.

Thanks,
Ludo'.

Re: 1.9.1 checklist

[Andy Wingo]

On Thu 28 May 2009 23:27, ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> There's one more item:
>
>   licensing:
>     Switch to LGPLv3+, as was decided some time ago.  Check the license
>     headers of new code and code inherited from Guile-VM.

Good point. I switched over the headers for VM .c code to be LGPL v2.1,
as it's all me and Keisuke, both of whom have assigned copyright; but
I'll have to take a look at all of the new scheme code too.

Cheers,

Andy
-- 
http://wingolog.org/