Release discussion 0.15

[bejant]

We already had long discussions on the meaning of 'stable' and 'unstable'

My two cents: You guys have been so much time inside this project that I fear you do not remember what "unstable" means out there... FreeCAD is almost an exception in that the "unstable" (Ubuntu PPA) is much more stable that what is considered stable out there.

Hi Abdullah, one substantial discussion started a couple months before you joined the forum. Here is the link to the discussion I had in mind (if you'd like to have a look).

To everyone, I'm also in favor of dropping the "unstable" wording. The term "Unstable" causes confusion for new users, and when providing help responses we often have to explain that:
"The term 'Unstable' doesn't mean it's more prone to crash".

[abdullah]

Hi Abdullah, one substantial discussion started a couple months before you joined the forum. Here is the link to the discussion I had in mind (if you'd like to have a look).

Thanks for the link. To me the problem is trying to differentiate Release and git HEAD with the word stable.

Personally, I would go to:
1. One Release per year. Where realease means all that extra work done for 0.14 including checking all translations and so on... I think it is too much work for doing it just every 6 months. More than one year sounds like an abandonned project to me.

2. "Development stable snapshots" => In Ubuntu this is the PPA. In windows we might be able to do something similar. However, I am not the right person to talk about that, because I am not aware of any windows requirement. Yes, our Development snapshots are stable!!! (Thanks to mainly Werner that spots and solves my mistakes before they go to master... )

About 1) one thing we could think is if we could actually make some tools (maybe there are there), so that for example translations, are done continuously. Something like a tool detects a translation is missing and this is notified to the translation team... maybe all this is already solved...

[peterl94]

I guess it depends on how much new stuff we want in the releases. I personally like the idea of release every 6 months, and then development builds in between.

I know the blender guys use Buildbot for doing automated builds. Do you think it could be used for FreeCAD?

[Pauvres_honteux]

How about this one:
As it seems you lot favours non-comparative words, then you might like the classifying way?

As I've followed FC development a few years now, I'm starting to get a feeling that the development process goes something like:

"create framework"
->
"fill with empty functions"
->
"make functions roughly work"
->
"functions work on a specific computer"
->
"work on majority of computers"
->
"finetune and polishing".

Theese succesive progress steps could be denominated A, B, C, D, E and F. Where A would be the ready product and F equals "framework implemented".
An example: 0.15.4071.E
Here one would interpret the 0.15-part as: we've come a small step in comparison with our goal, which is enormous and far away.
The .4071-part as: we've done this many updates since..?
The .E-part as: we boldly claim update no. 4071 will work on the majority of computers with supported OS:es.

I'd say you kill three birds with one stone here: it's easy to define in the wiki and simple to type and above all, fast recognision. Maybe even easy searchable?

[bernd]

As I remember the steps of Release 0.14. one of the first things after the disscussion on the forum was starting the Release Notes. Makeing Release Notes is something like "We really would like to release soon". Release notes 015 hasn't been created yet. I did not dare to start them ...

BTW: If we gone release every 6 month we'll have 1.0 in just 43 years

[r-frank]

Hello.

Just created the Release Notes 0.15 - Page as a framework.
Feel free to add the necessary points ...

Roland

[r-frank]

Hello.

During the last two weeks nothing big seemed to happen.
May I take the chance to ask about the status ?

Are you waiting for something special to happen (like outstanding merges or something like that) ?

Hopefully i do NOT appear to bee too annoying ...

Thanks for your time and for your answers ...

Roland

[ulrich1a]

I think we are waiting for the ellipse in sketcher.

Ulrich

[shoogen]

Werner wanted to rename the python exceptions. Which would make sense to do before they appear in a stable release for the first time.
The transition to quarter does not seem to be finished. We still discover some critical bugs.
OCCT 6.8.0 is expected to be released at the end of October. The beta was announced yesterday. If use a vanilla OCCT instead of OCE, we could update the libpack before the 0.15 Release of FreeCAD (I'm not sure if it is a good idea. But to my knowledge OCEs main advantage is the improved portability, which would not apply to a pre-built windows lib-pack)
I have my doubts that an OCE version based on 6.8.0 will be available before Christmas.

[jmaustpc]

OCCT 6.8.0 is expected to be released at the end of October. The beta was announced yesterday. If use a vanilla OCCT instead of OCE, we could update the libpack before the 0.15 Release of FreeCAD (I'm not sure if it is a good idea. But to my knowledge OCEs main advantage is the improved portability, which would not apply to a pre-built windows lib-pack)
I have my doubts that an OCE version based on 6.8.0 will be available before Christmas.

On the Ubuntu's we can just update both the PPA's to include the new oce (which we will also have to add to the PPA) when OCE is released or of course use OCC etc...

But on Windows with those lib packs, perhaps it would be best to wait for the new OCC.