Priorities for 6.10

[Duncan Coutts]

On Wed, 2008-07-09 at 15:35 -0700, Don Stewart wrote:

> > b) You and Duncan lead
> > 
> > The disadvantage of (a) is that it couples the release cycles. 

Yes, that's a problem especially as we want to grow the platform (while
maintaining release quality and timeliness).

> > On the other hand, a release of GHC with boot-libs only won't be
> > much use to anyone.
> 
> I'm very keen to have HLP in place by the 6.10 release. I've started
> a wiki page here,
> 
>     http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell_Platform
> 
> which includes an example of the kind of coverage the HLP would provide.
> Duncan, can you add some  details on the mechanics of the release
> process we've talked about, and we can flesh out in more detail how
> this identification and release process will work.

Sure. My main suggestion is to follow the example of GNOME and it's
release planning/management/cycle.

The GNOME platform consists of Gtk+ at the core and about 100 other
packages each with their own version numbers. Each package has to meet a
set of QA criteria before it can be included in the platform releases.

A key point is that the Gtk+ and GNOME release cycles are *not*
synchronised. Gtk+ has roughly a 9 month major release cycle (with
intermediate minor updates) and it's releases are partly based on when
features are completed, in this respect it is much like ghc. While GNOME
has strict 6 month release cycles. There are intermediate minor
releases. The timetable is known in advance and maintainers of each
individual package are expected to provide working tarballs at various
stages in the run-up to a release. They also have an infrastructure for
testing this large collection of packages to make sure they all work
together. This is vital or release management starts to take a long time
for a few individuals.

So the point of this analogy is that the releases of ghc and the haskell
platform should not be synchronised. The platform releases should follow
the ghc releases.

Of course then the hardest thing is pressure from users for that window
to be as short as possible but I think that's something we need to
resist. The GNOME developers get at least 3 months to update their
packages to work with the latest Gtk+ release.

Duncan