When is an RC not an RC?

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Thu, 2012-10-04 at 06:59 +0200, Michael Wood wrote:
> On 4 October 2012 01:58, Andrew Bartlett <abartlet at samba.org> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2012-10-03 at 08:41 +0200, Michael Wood wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Although, what's the point of labelling something a "release
> >> candidate" if it's not a candidate for a release.  i.e. if it's not
> >> ready for release (except for unforeseen bugs.)?
> >
> > Well, we needed to move on from betas to a must more restricted process,
> > and calling them gamma releses just don't have the same ring to
> > it :-).
> 
> Fair enough :)  I don't really mind what you call it.  My brain just
> rebelled against the suggestion to release a release candidate when it
> was known that a breaking change would be needed later before the
> final release.
> 
> I understand that nothing's black and white and that there are pros
> and cons to delaying a release candidate for something like this.  So
> if this change did not make it into rc3, I would not complain :)

Part of this is a spin-off of an existing process we solidified in the
betas for Samba 4.0 and expanded to the 3.x release process around the
same time.  The idea is to have time-based releases, where they are the
best that we have at the time, and we don't delay them for 'one last
fix'.  

Now, we bent the rules a little for RC1 (as we had already just done an
extra beta and wanted to avoid doing yet another beta and then rc1
before SDC), but essentially by pushing out an RC release every two
weeks until we are happy with it, we avoid long delays as we wait for
one last change, and the associated issues that come from rushed
changes. 

The actual 4.0.0 release date isn't fixed however, so if issues keep
coming up that we don't feel we can address in 4.0.1, we may have to
continue for another RC.

What we do want at this point is for folks to give this a try!  We need
testing, not just of the AD DC, but also of the file server (the SMB3
code there has good tests, but quite new) and the printing and other
features.  

Finally, don't feel bad about asking how our release process works - it
is far better to talk about this, as it helps everyone understand it. 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                                http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team           http://samba.org