[Geoserver-devel] geoserver 2.2 alpha/beta release?

Hi all,

As far as I know the last major development change coming down the pipe that is planned for 2.2 is the security work. I am just working on a couple more tutorials to better the user documentation story, but the work is generally ready to be committed. I hope to have the work committed by tomorrow (Tuesday western time) unless there are any objections.

After which I would like to propose the first alpha/beta release of the 2.2 series. Part of the motivation is having a release of 2.2 in place before the foss4gna conference next week. Andrea and myself will be delivering a talk titled “GeoServer, What’s new in 2.2” in which we are going to survey all new features that will be coming with 2.2. IT would be awesome to have a release to supplement the talk with.

Any objections? I wouldn’t be getting to the release until later this week.

Also, preferences to whether it be an alpha or a beta? I am thinking of staying on the safe side and calling it alpha just because it will be so close after the big security commit. But I could go either way. I know we have released pretty unstable betas in the past so it might not be too unreasonable. But no strong opinion.

Thoughts?

-Justin


Justin Deoliveira
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Enterprise support for open source geospatial.

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Justin Deoliveira <jdeolive@anonymised.com1501…> wrote:

Hi all,

As far as I know the last major development change coming down the pipe that is planned for 2.2 is the security work. I am just working on a couple more tutorials to better the user documentation story, but the work is generally ready to be committed. I hope to have the work committed by tomorrow (Tuesday western time) unless there are any objections.

After which I would like to propose the first alpha/beta release of the 2.2 series. Part of the motivation is having a release of 2.2 in place before the foss4gna conference next week. Andrea and myself will be delivering a talk titled “GeoServer, What’s new in 2.2” in which we are going to survey all new features that will be coming with 2.2. IT would be awesome to have a release to supplement the talk with.

Any objections? I wouldn’t be getting to the release until later this week.

Also, preferences to whether it be an alpha or a beta? I am thinking of staying on the safe side and calling it alpha just because it will be so close after the big security commit. But I could go either way. I know we have released pretty unstable betas in the past so it might not be too unreasonable. But no strong opinion.

Thoughts?

Hmm… if we call it an alpha we’re on the safe side regards to the quality of the product we’re delivering,
which is rather unknown after the large set of GSIP landed in such a short time.
But very few people will be interested in checking it out (too adventorous I guess).

If we call it a beta we’ll get more people trying it out though.

I guess it boils down to the intentions of developers (and companies backing them): if we call it a beta
we should be ready to treat it as such, something that we intend to work on, bug fixing wise, in
order to go to RC and then a release, in a relatively short amount of time (two months maybe?).
Which really means, allocating time to fix whatever issues pop up in the beta, and time to do other
beta releases with a… monthly basis or so (don’t take me too seriously here, I’m just proposing something
to foster discussion).
And of course reactivate and fix the CITE tests on trunk.

Cheers
Andrea

Ing. Andrea Aime
GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Tech lead

Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy

phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 962313
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://geo-solutions.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeoSolutionsIT
http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaaime
http://twitter.com/geowolf


Not that my answer should surprise anyone, as I'm most always the
voice of pushing for living more on the edge (but appreciate it always
balanced by more conservative voices, as the dialog and balance is
what makes this community work so well).

But my vote is to call it beta. Mostly from the perspective of
attracting more beta testers, as Andrea points out. I think we'll get
a lot more people checking it out if we call it 'beta'. It is a first
beta, and in the blog post we can advertise it as such. But I like
alphas for when we still may put more major things in to the release
or when it's super experimental ideas (like first app-schema work) /
we know it's going to be buggy. Betas imho just need to get better
each time. And I think OpenGeo is interested in stability sooner
rather than later, so can hopefully put time in to fixing the blocker
and critical bugs and helping get releases out.

So yeah, I'd agree if we can get commitment from someone to put out
another beta in a month (or less if there's truly blocker bugs) then
we should go for beta. I'm no longer driving OpenGeo product planning,
but hopefully Justin could secure resources to commit to that.

But yeah, I think the month time frame sounds reasonable, with the
option to do more often if desired / there are blocker bugs.

C

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:31 AM, Andrea Aime
<andrea.aime@anonymised.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Justin Deoliveira <jdeolive@anonymised.com>
wrote:

Hi all,

As far as I know the last major development change coming down the pipe
that is planned for 2.2 is the security work. I am just working on a couple
more tutorials to better the user documentation story, but the work is
generally ready to be committed. I hope to have the work committed
by tomorrow (Tuesday western time) unless there are any objections.

After which I would like to propose the first alpha/beta release of the
2.2 series. Part of the motivation is having a release of 2.2 in place
before the foss4gna conference next week. Andrea and myself will be
delivering a talk titled "GeoServer, What's new in 2.2" in which we are
going to survey all new features that will be coming with 2.2. IT would be
awesome to have a release to supplement the talk with.

Any objections? I wouldn't be getting to the release until later this
week.

Also, preferences to whether it be an alpha or a beta? I am thinking of
staying on the safe side and calling it alpha just because it will be so
close after the big security commit. But I could go either way. I know we
have released pretty unstable betas in the past so it might not be too
unreasonable. But no strong opinion.

Thoughts?

Hmm.. if we call it an alpha we're on the safe side regards to the quality
of the product we're delivering,
which is rather unknown after the large set of GSIP landed in such a short
time.
But very few people will be interested in checking it out (too adventorous I
guess).

If we call it a beta we'll get more people trying it out though.

I guess it boils down to the intentions of developers (and companies backing
them): if we call it a beta
we should be ready to treat it as such, something that we intend to work on,
bug fixing wise, in
order to go to RC and then a release, in a relatively short amount of time
(two months maybe?).
Which really means, allocating time to fix whatever issues pop up in the
beta, and time to do other
beta releases with a... monthly basis or so (don't take me too seriously
here, I'm just proposing something
to foster discussion).
And of course reactivate and fix the CITE tests on trunk.

Cheers
Andrea

--
-------------------------------------------------------
Ing. Andrea Aime
GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Tech lead

Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy

phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 962313
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://geo-solutions.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeoSolutionsIT
http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaaime
http://twitter.com/geowolf

-------------------------------------------------------

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Thanks for the input guys. I can say that I can definitely vouch for that the fact that OpenGeo is committed to pushing on geoserver 2.2 and moving that toward stability, in the short term.

The security work is the last major destabilizing change coming down from us. The focus over the next few months will definitely be to push on betas, etc… moving torward 2.2 RC and an official 2.2 release.

So in that respect i think going with beta makes sense as we will definitely be focused on fixing bugs, pushing out another beta soon (i think one month makes sense) that will be much more stable and an improvement on the beta that is soon to come.

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Chris Holmes <cholmes@anonymised.com1…> wrote:

Not that my answer should surprise anyone, as I’m most always the
voice of pushing for living more on the edge (but appreciate it always
balanced by more conservative voices, as the dialog and balance is
what makes this community work so well).

But my vote is to call it beta. Mostly from the perspective of
attracting more beta testers, as Andrea points out. I think we’ll get
a lot more people checking it out if we call it ‘beta’. It is a first
beta, and in the blog post we can advertise it as such. But I like
alphas for when we still may put more major things in to the release
or when it’s super experimental ideas (like first app-schema work) /
we know it’s going to be buggy. Betas imho just need to get better
each time. And I think OpenGeo is interested in stability sooner
rather than later, so can hopefully put time in to fixing the blocker
and critical bugs and helping get releases out.

So yeah, I’d agree if we can get commitment from someone to put out
another beta in a month (or less if there’s truly blocker bugs) then
we should go for beta. I’m no longer driving OpenGeo product planning,
but hopefully Justin could secure resources to commit to that.

But yeah, I think the month time frame sounds reasonable, with the
option to do more often if desired / there are blocker bugs.

C

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 3:31 AM, Andrea Aime
<andrea.aime@anonymised.com> wrote:

On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Justin Deoliveira <jdeolive@anonymised.com>
wrote:

Hi all,

As far as I know the last major development change coming down the pipe
that is planned for 2.2 is the security work. I am just working on a couple
more tutorials to better the user documentation story, but the work is
generally ready to be committed. I hope to have the work committed
by tomorrow (Tuesday western time) unless there are any objections.

After which I would like to propose the first alpha/beta release of the
2.2 series. Part of the motivation is having a release of 2.2 in place
before the foss4gna conference next week. Andrea and myself will be
delivering a talk titled “GeoServer, What’s new in 2.2” in which we are
going to survey all new features that will be coming with 2.2. IT would be
awesome to have a release to supplement the talk with.

Any objections? I wouldn’t be getting to the release until later this
week.

Also, preferences to whether it be an alpha or a beta? I am thinking of
staying on the safe side and calling it alpha just because it will be so
close after the big security commit. But I could go either way. I know we
have released pretty unstable betas in the past so it might not be too
unreasonable. But no strong opinion.

Thoughts?

Hmm… if we call it an alpha we’re on the safe side regards to the quality
of the product we’re delivering,
which is rather unknown after the large set of GSIP landed in such a short
time.
But very few people will be interested in checking it out (too adventorous I
guess).

If we call it a beta we’ll get more people trying it out though.

I guess it boils down to the intentions of developers (and companies backing
them): if we call it a beta
we should be ready to treat it as such, something that we intend to work on,
bug fixing wise, in
order to go to RC and then a release, in a relatively short amount of time
(two months maybe?).
Which really means, allocating time to fix whatever issues pop up in the
beta, and time to do other
beta releases with a… monthly basis or so (don’t take me too seriously
here, I’m just proposing something
to foster discussion).
And of course reactivate and fix the CITE tests on trunk.

Cheers
Andrea

Ing. Andrea Aime
GeoSolutions S.A.S.
Tech lead

Via Poggio alle Viti 1187
55054 Massarosa (LU)
Italy

phone: +39 0584 962313
fax: +39 0584 962313
mob: +39 339 8844549

http://www.geo-solutions.it
http://geo-solutions.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/GeoSolutionsIT
http://www.linkedin.com/in/andreaaime
http://twitter.com/geowolf



Better than sec? Nothing is better than sec when it comes to
monitoring Big Data applications. Try Boundary one-second
resolution app monitoring today. Free.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/Boundary-dev2dev


Geoserver-devel mailing list
Geoserver-devel@lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/geoserver-devel


Justin Deoliveira
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Enterprise support for open source geospatial.