[FFmpeg-devel] Getting the FFmpeg 0.6 ball rolling

[Robert Swain]

Hello good peoples,

We made the 0.5 release on the 3rd of March last year. It's now the 3rd 
of February. Maybe it's time we get the ball rolling for another release 
so that distributions can resync to a newer version.

First off, it seems that at least from Debian/Ubuntu's perspective, the 
release was appreciated. Thanks to Diego and others that helped to get 
the 0.5 release out the door.

Diego took a hard line last time that we would do the release on his 
terms so that we could at least get one out the door without getting 
bogged down in endless discussion and flaming. And then we could review 
its success afterwards.

The last release was supposed to receive only backporting of security 
fixes and no bug fixes. We originally intended to have a second release 
after about 6 months but this didn't happen.

It is suggested that policy for this release be outlined at the 
beginning. I think we should maybe limit the discussion to a couple of 
weeks at most after which we hit release process hard. I don't think we 
should talk endlessly to create the 'perfect' release, but rather act on 
a few pertinent issues and try it again to see how it goes and what 
works best.

Initial proposals for the next release:

- Encourage downstream to report bugs against the release and submit 
patches back to us. At least then we can verify if they are still bugs 
in trunk, if not then we can backport the fixes, if so we can review 
their patches and merge them or fix them in a better way as we choose.

- Make point releases (e.g. 0.6.1) when enough patches have 
accumulated/significant patches land/enough time has passed without more 
patches coming in.

Maybe if we tried the above, we could get better ties with downstream in 
terms of releases.

I know the two-week-freeze on trunk was a cause for concern last year 
but it seems to be the most effective way to make a release. It should 
focus everyone's attention on fixing bugs for just two weeks. That 
benefits trunk as well as people wanting to make a release.

Otherwise, I think 0.5 went pretty well and didn't cause too much 
inconvenience or extra work load on out part.

If we are to pay more attention to downstream and make point releases 
however, we could do with a volunteer to keep on top of patches in major 
downstream distros, encouraging downstream to submit bug reports/patches 
back up to us, checking validity of reports against trunk, verifying 
which commits fixed issues that are fixed in trunk, pushing for review 
of patches which fix issues that need merging and also backporting them 
to the release branch. Maybe Reinhard would be willing to try this?

If this effort to backport and make point releases fails, well, the 
release will be like the last one so it wouldn't be any major loss.

So, let's get the ball rolling. And please, no never-ending flame wars. :)

Regards,
Rob