[Jalview-discuss] Jalview release?

[Jim Procter]

Hello, Albert.

On 09/02/2010 13:59, Albert Vilella wrote:
> Is there a jalview release planned soon or a minor release for small
> feature updates planned?

Not within the next couple of weeks, I'm afraid (I know I mentioned 
early February to you 3 weeks ago!). This is because there are too many 
features in the current development release that are neither finished or 
documented for me to be able to complete a release within the next two 
weeks.

We have not yet devised a standard release cycle for Jalview, including 
regular major and minor releases - although I understand that this is 
(as you have told me!) a standard requirement of open source projects, 
the current web site, project management, and bug tracking systems we 
have in place in Dundee are not up to the job. This means that, at least 
for the next 3 months, we will stick to the the existing Jalview release 
model, which involves a simultaneous applet, application and 
documentation release roughly every 3 months.

The way I have been doing this with our current source control and 
continuous integration set up is as follows:

1. development branch is forked to a new release branch - the release 
branch is continuously integrated at 
http://www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk/users/ws-dev1/jalview/release/
2. release branch is tested, patched, documented until its verified as 
stable by human testers (there is no formal incremental testing 
framework in Jalview - as yet).
3. Release branch artefacts (source tarball, webstart and 
InstallAnywhere application bundles, applet jars, online help 
documentation, applet parameter documentation) are packaged for release 
on www.jalview.org - at this point the web site will be updated and 
email announcements sent to jalview-discuss and jalview-announce.
4. (post-release) Relevant patches that were applied to the release 
branch are backported onto development branch.

I hope to take step one and begin step two within the next two weeks. It 
then usually takes at least a week to push through the validation stage 
for the subset of features in development and I will then wait until 
Thursday of that (or the following) week to update the website with the 
new release.  By my calendar, that would be either Thursday the 25th of 
February or the 11th of March 2010.

Jim.

ps. It sounds like you have some specific requirements/deadlines in mind 
for the next release. Do you want to discuss them on list ?

-- 
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J. B. Procter  (JALVIEW/ENFIN)  Barton Bioinformatics Research Group
Phone/Fax:+44(0)1382 388734/345764http://www.compbio.dundee.ac.uk
The University of Dundee is a Scottish Registered Charity, No. SC015096.