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

[Nick Mathewson]

On Fri, Sep 7, 2012 at 5:53 PM, Mike Perry <mikeperry at torproject.org> wrote:
> Thus spake Mike Perry (mikeperry at torproject.org):
>> Thus spake Nick Mathewson (nickm at freehaven.net):
>>
>> > 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:
>> >
>> > [*snip schedule dates I'm certain to forget anyways*]
>> >
>> > 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.
>>
>> For people who are only occasionally/tangentially involved in tor-core
>> development like myself, it might be useful to have some kind of active
>> ping/reminder on tickets with the Tor-0.2.4.x-final trac milestone
>> around the deadline deadline date(s) you deem applicable for that
>> ticket.
>>
>> Unless it is way more work for you, I think I would prefer per-ticket
>> reminders on trac to blanket email announcements, so I know exactly what
>> and when I should care about getting something done if I really want it
>> done, and what deadline category you think each thing falls in to.

It is indeed more work for me to re-evaluate every Tor ticket every
month; maybe we can come up with some way to make it less work so that
everybody gets the info they need without me doing monthly triage?  Or
maybe I should just commit to monthly triage.

> Just saw that there's already 184 tickets currently in
> Tor-0.2.4.x-final. Wow.

TBF, probably not every one is really for 0.2.4.  People put stuff in
the next release's milestone as an aspiration pretty often.  Also,
there are probably things (proposals, intended proposals, stuff in
Tor: undecided, vague intentions) that ought to have tickets for
0.2.4.x but don't.

> So maybe instead: We can all try to tag things in Tor-0.2.4.x-final with
> the right deadline tag, and then you can just do announcement emails?
> And/or the project coordinator can handle pinging people/tickets at the
> deadline points?

AFAIK, the right deadline tag would be small vs large and
proposal-needed vs no-proposal-needed?  I'd be glad for these tags to
exist, so long as somebody else helps me make them, and so long as I
have the freedom to decide after the fact that I was wrong about
something.

yrs,
-- 
Nick