7.5 release plans

[Daniel Stone]

Hi,
So, 7.5 is coming up, I was the last one to leg it out the door when the
topic came up, and I guess we've got to get planning, so here we are.

Firstly, this is largely dependent on what 1.6 looks like, and to a
large extent, the great body of actual 7.5 issues (beyond the usual
bluesky 'we can ship x, y and z feature' discussions) will be 1.6.
Which suits me, to be honest.  So, I'll cheerfully take a back seat
to Keith this year while I try to move myself and all my worldly
possessions (that I haven't shed) to another hemisphere.

So here's roughly what I think 7.5 should look like:
  * Nowish: Release 7.4.  Yeah.  To the pub!
  * Oct 2008: 'Oh right, server 1.6.  Heh.'
  * ? Nov 2008: Server 1.6 branches or something?
  * ? Dec 2008: Server 1.6 releases?
  * 21st Jan 2009: Feature freeze for server 1.7.  Branch other modules
                   which are going to require a stable branch.
  * 14th Feb 2009: Branch server 1.7.  Branch nominations for 7.5 in.
  * 31st Feb 2009: Code freeze (but for bugfixes) server 1.7.
                   Release server 1.6.99.901.
                   Release 7.5 beta 1.
                   Stop sucking in all module updates.
  * 14th March 2009: Release server 1.6.99.902, 7.5 beta 2.
  * 31st March 2009: 7.5RC1.
  * 1st April 2009: Release 7.5, makes good April Fool's story.  If not,
                    Phoronix gets to run '7.5 released ... nah, X.Org
                    didn't release on time again! April Fool's! Ha!'.
                    Either way, everyone's a winner.

Then the release has four months after 1.6 to ship, more or less.  Input
in particular might (will probably) need more development than that, so
it's quite possible that we'd branch in early-to-mid-April, freeze in
early May, and release at the start of June.  So please consider this
extremely tentative.

Beyond that point, something that I've talked a fair bit with ajax and
others about is that being a superhero really sucks.  I'm not just
saying that because it's my turn, but because it really does.  If you're
a driver or subsystem maintainer whose role in 7.5 is not obvious (are
you going to be needing a stable branch? are you planning to do major
feature development in this time? do you need fixes regularly c-p'ed?),
please bug me or at least not be upset when I bug you later.

Bonus points for having your own trees for patch submission and review,
and I'll also try to keep my own for substantial changes as well.
Getting more targeted review than the people who happen to read all the
diffs on xorg-commit@ would be rad.

Also, because he didn't entirely say no on IRC, alanc will be working
on this, too.  Thanks Alan! :) We're both on #xorg-devel, as well as
watching the lists, xorg-team, and xorg-commit, so it should be
reasonably difficult to fail to attract our attention.

Questions? Comments? Abuse?

Cheers,
Daniel
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