[Bf-committers] B-Con 3?

[Matt Ebb]

On 04/01/2007, at 2:24 PM, Chris Want wrote:

> So, my question would be: should the documentation be updated to be  
> more
> lenient towards new features during B-Con 3, should we revise our  
> release
> level to B-Con 2, or should CVS really be in 'feature freeze'?  
> Either of
> these outcomes would be fine be me, as long as documentation and  
> reality
> are more closely in sync.

Hi, I presume this mail is due to my debating in IRC the other day :)

I've been trying to review, clean up and commit a few small  
straggling patches (yes I know I also committed something else too)  
that have been hanging around in the tracker, things like compositing  
nodes, and I wouldn't mind committing a couple more like the gamma  
node, wanted by the plumi dudes.

At least from my experience, I was under the impression that B-con 3  
was more about "no new large projects", on the level of rewrites, new  
things like sculpt, etc. but that small things were ok. This is in  
contrast to B-con 2 which according to the CMS page seems more about  
working on big new features to get them into a state to commit to bf  
CVS - nowadays I guess you can substitute 'patches' for 'tuhopuu',  
and in contrast to B-con 4 which is "Only bugfixes are allowed into  
CVS and new cool ideas just have to wait for the next B-Con 1."

So what really is the difference between B-con 3 and B-con 4? If in B- 
con3, people can continue committing the to big target projects  
"Commits are allowed in the target projects, as well for maintenance  
and bugfixing." then what about people who aren't working on big  
target projects? I'd say that in this period, small, incremental, non- 
disruptive commits (you could say maintenance) should be ok.

As for the release candidate builds, I was under the impression that  
the one recently posted were on more of an alpha level, with more to  
come, not necessarily indicative of the final release, but would help  
get people reporting bugs. According to the CMS page too, it's at B- 
con 4 that "test builds are done on release level" so if it is the  
case that the current RC is supposed to be an accurate preview of the  
release, then we should probably move to B-con 4.

> As discussed at the meeting, I would also recommend that when we
> change B-Con levels, that this mailing list is notified in a message
> that includes a repost of the description of the B-Con level.

Yes, in any case, it would be *great* to have more talk about this on  
the list rather than in IRC conversations, or only in the meetings.  
Not everyone can get to the meetings, and not everyone has time to  
hang out in IRC all day long, especially when in a totally different  
time zone. It's not really any more difficult to type things into an  
email window than it is to type into an IRC window, and would make it  
much easier for people like me to actually participate without  
feeling like an outsider, left in the dark!

cheers,

Matt


> [1] http://www.blender3d.org/cms/The_Release_Cycle.361.0.html

------------------------------------------
Matt Ebb . matt at mke3.net . http://mke3.net