Time-based Samba4 releases?

[Andrew Bartlett]

I've been pondering the prospect of 'time based' Samba4 releases.  In
particular, the idea of getting TP, alpha and beta releases out on a
time rather than a feature schedule, so as to keep up interest.

Samba4 has a number of challenges, the biggest being the 'completeness
bug'.  For months, we have put off the idea of the tech preview because
we didn't have enough features.  

I really liked how the linux.conf.au deadline worked, and I hope we can
make a similar splash at SambaXP.  I also hope to make a tech preview
release (which in all honesty isn't much more than a code drop with some
extra checks) every month or 6 weeks.  

The idea is that even as developer resources go up and down, that we
should be reporting to our users on our continued progress.  Users are
comforted by a 'blessed' tarball, even if it's not much more than an SVN
snapshot given a version number.

While the final Samba 4.0.0 release should be based more on a 'when it
is ready' basis, we are clearly not going to get everything perfect.  

Even so, I think the tech preview shows that we have code worthy of
broader use, and I think we should aim for a date, with the feeling
being to defer work rather than push back the release indefinitely.
(I'm not sure what that date should be, given our wildly varying
resources however...)

Andrew Bartlett
-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org
Student Network Administrator, Hawker College  http://hawkerc.net
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