4 month release cycles (was: Re: Technical Release Manager for Samba)

[Andrew Bartlett]

On Tue, 2015-05-12 at 11:56 +0200, Stefan Kania wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I followd your discussion all the way and now I think I should give you
> a different point of view. I install Samba for many years (starting with
> Samba 2) to many small custemers upt to 200 Clients. For me the packages
> from the distribution was never a good choice. These packages are often
> to old or not complet. So I started compiling samba onmy own. For many
> years I'm only using the Sernet-packages.
> The biggest pain for me is often the update to the next version. Why?
> Because the releases have so many changes, that somtimes it takes a long
> time to find the problems after a update to the next version.
> So I think a short cycle of 4 or max. 6 month would be very good.
> 
> On more thing you should think about. Som of you said that many
> customers build ther one packages from source. I think you will find a
> lot more installations with distribution-packages and sernet-packages as
> you will find selfcompiled Samba4. Because the people who compiled there
> own samba will give feedback.
> 
> So for me over the years of implementing Samba a short cycle would be
> much better then 9 or 12 month and then do an update with many changes.
> And if, after 4 month you have only bugfixes and no new functions, so
> what? A new version don't need a lot of new features, a new version must
> be more secure and more reliable.

Thanks.  I got very similar feedback when I was with a customer on
Monday.  They are big fans of short release cycles, and use them for
their own internal development, as short a 2 weeks.  For them, seeing
features they needed, like bad password lockout, sit in a branch for 12
months before the release, and then for me to see users notice a bug
(double-counting) only 12 months later, was quite frustrating. 

That is, they would also much prefer 4 month release cycles, with
smaller sets of changes. 

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett                       http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba