[MPlayer-users] When will there be a new release?

[Andrew Savchenko]

Hi,

On Tuesday 14 October 2008 14:03, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
[...]
> You also say that making a release is too much work., but I bet
> by the time you have been arguing against a new release, you
> would have been able to prepare on just as easily.

I agree, releases aren't that easy to make. But IMO they worth it. 
Putting aside all that waffle about "responsibility" and 
"stability", there are my considerations why releases should 
exist:

1) It is a good point to cleanup, to fix long standing issues, bugs 
and so on. Of course it isn't possible to fix 'em all for any 
particular release. But release creation incites developers to put 
things in order, to sync and converge changes, to sync/finish 
translations at least (but not at last!).

2) Despite the fact that SVN versions of mplayer are quite stable 
and nice, most of users use a versions from their distro's 
repositories. And most packagers do not care enough to update 
something from SVN (gentoo is the only known exception for me). 
Well, I do not say that I like that, but this is how things are 
done in Linux oftenly, most of the time.

Well, to take stock off: release creation will make newer version 
of mplayer available to the much wider community of people, most 
of which are not qualified enough to use SVN or are lasy enough to 
do this (and do not forget, every good programmer is somewhat lasy 
8-))).

Look for the mplayer-users list archives. You will see a huge burst 
of bugreports and feedbacks after each release. And this is why 
releases worth all work done to make them. Do not underestimate 
the value of the user feedback. Even the best developers are not 
able to test their program thoroughly due to limited numbers. And 
some good projects died just because they thought they're 
irreplaceable, do not repeat their mistakes please, I really want 
to see radiant future of MPlayer. At least once a year we can 
spend some of our time to make a release.

So, to summarise. Release creation isn't easy thing, but they have 
cogent advantages. That's why IMHO releases should be created in 
the interval somewhere between half a year and year. Too often 
releases take too much time, OTOH too rare may drop the quality of 
code (due to lack of cleanup and pending bugs) and distract some 
users.

Well, I can help with release creation with what I have. 
Unfortunately, me free time is limited (well, perhaps the same as 
for all of you), but still I want to do something, perhaps, some 
fixes )). However,  in my opinion someone of experienced veterans 
should take the leadership of this release creation. Perhaps, 
Diego?

Best regards,
Andrew
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