[tor-dev] Tenative schedule for Tor 0.2.4 [Or, why I might reject your patches in November->March]

[Nick Mathewson]

Hi, all!

Last year, I announced a tenative schedule for 0.2.3.x.  We didn't
stick to it, and things have gone a little pear-shaped with getting
0.2.3.x stabilized, but I think with a few tweaks we can use something
similar to get a good schedule out for 0.2.4.x.

My goals remain about what they were before: get release out faster by
getting better at saying "no" to features after a release window.  My
target is March or April 2013.

To that end:

October 10, 2012: Big feature proposal checkpoint.  Any large
complicated feature which requires a design proposal must have its
first design proposal draft by this date.

November 10, 2012: Big feature checkpoint.  If I don't know about a
large feature by this date, it might have to wait.
November 10, 2012: Big feature proposal freeze. Any small feature
which requires a design proposal must have its design proposal
finished by this date.

December 10, 2012: Big feature merge freeze. No big features will be
merged after this date.
December 10, 2012: Small feature proposal freeze. Any small feature
which requires a design proposal must have its design proposal
finished by this date.

January 10, 2013: Feature merge freeze. No features after this date. I mean it.

Feb 20, 2013: Buggy feature backout date. Any feature which seems
intractably buggy by this date may be disabled, deprecated, or removed
until the next release.

On the meaning of "feature": I'm probably going to argue that some
things that you think are bugfixes are features.  I'm probably going
to argue that your security bugfix is actually a security feature.
I'm probably even going to argue that most non-regression bugfixes are
features.  Let's try to get a release out *early* in 2013 this time,
come heck or high water.

(This is all subject to change, but let's not push it.)

[0] https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2011-July/002851.html

happy hacking,
-- 
Nick