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This describes how releases are planned and scheduled, and where users of GLib can look to see what the current (loose) roadmap is. Signed-off-by: Philip Withnall <pwithnall@endlessos.org>
66 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
66 lines
3.1 KiB
Markdown
Roadmap
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===
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The roadmap for development of GLib in upcoming releases is tracked in GitLab,
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using its [milestones feature](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/milestones).
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Look on the upcoming milestones to see what features and fixes are planned for
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each release.
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An issue being assigned to a milestone is no guarantee that it will actually be
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fixed in time for that milestone. Milestones are a rough prioritisation system
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for work, but GLib is a volunteer project with no fixed resources, so no
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guarantees can be given.
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All releases are time-based rather than feature-based, as the development and
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stable branches of GLib should always be in a releasable state. Sometimes, at
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the discretion of the maintainers, a release may be held for a week or so in
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order to allow a particular merge request to land so that it can be made
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available to distributions or testers more rapidly.
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When making a release, all remaining issues and merge requests allocated to the
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milestone for that release should be fixed (potentially delaying the release),
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or rescheduled to a different release, based on the maintainers’ assessment.
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Unstable release planning
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---
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At the start of a development cycle, milestones are created for each release in
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the cycle according to the [GNOME release
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schedule](https://wiki.gnome.org/Schedule). GLib roughly follows the GNOME
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release schedule, but makes its releases one or two weeks ahead of each
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corresponding GNOME release. This allows other GNOME modules to depend on the
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correct GLib version for new APIs. GLib does not follow the GNOME module
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versioning scheme.
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As the milestones are created, maintainers will assign issues to them, based on
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what they think is possible to achieve for each milestone given the amount of
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developer time available before the release.
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Issues affecting a lot of users (such as common crashes), and new features which
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maintainers think will have a wide benefit are prioritised.
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As a development cycle progresses, some of the releases are timed to coincide
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with [GNOME’s API/feature, string and hard code
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freezes](https://wiki.gnome.org/ReleasePlanning/Freezes). Issues which add API
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and features are scheduled for the earlier micro releases in a development
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cycle, followed by issues which add or change translatable strings, followed by
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smaller bug fixes, documentation and unit test updates.
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Stable release planning
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---
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Stable micro releases are scheduled at a cadence picked by maintainers,
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depending on the rate at which bugs are being found in that stable branch. More
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bugs leads to a more frequent release cadence.
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Historically, the rate of releases on each stable branch has decreased inversely
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proportionally to the time since the initial release of that branch.
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There is no limit on the number of micro releases in a stable release series.
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Typically there will be around 6. Micro releases stop once there are no more
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bugs found in a stable series, or once a new stable series supercedes it.
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The milestone for the next micro release in a stable series is created when the
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previous micro release is made, such that only one stable micro release is
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scheduled at any time.
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