[M3devel] CM3 Release Engineering and Feedback

[Olaf Wagner]

Hi again,

I can imagine that everybody is a bit tired of all the mails concerning
the public release of CM3 5.8 and its problems, but nonetheless I
don't want this to become a one or two man show, so I'll summarize
the current status again.

  o RC2 has been released and publicly announced on the m3announce list
    and in comp.lang.modul3. There are several problems though with the
    packages, so that we should provide another release candidate, hopefullly
    at the end of this week.

  o There hasn't been much feedback, neither from the list of active
    developers nor from end users for RC2. I'd really appreciate some
    more reports about installation attempts and the problems encountered.

  o There's still the open discussion about the location and search
    strategy for config files where no conclusion or agreement has
    been reached as far as I know.

  o There are also still open issues about the integration of
    system-dependent installation archives, update/improvement/rewrite
    of the web presentation etc.

  o There are several open issues concerned with concrete test failures
    and installation problems that would need to be taken care of.

  o Documentation for non-POSIX, especially Windows systems is still
    lacking, too.

  o The Hudson infrastructure for automatic continuous build and
    regression testing has grown significantly (mostly due to contributions
    of Jay Krell) that we will be able to build almost all major target
    platforms for this and possibly future releases with it.

I won't be able to care for all these tasks and issues alone.
All help is still appreciated. It shouldn't be difficult, as everything
is checked-in (sources, documents) and/or publicly accessible (WWW,
Hudson, Trac).

As for me, I'm going to build RC3 and the final release, and may then
invest some time in reviewing and improving the distributed Hudson
setup, which has been created in a rather ad-hoc fashion, because
I needed tools to control the release engineering process.

There are also still the Elego ComPact and DCVS M3 packages which
I started to review for publishing long ago, but have never had
the time and energy to finish. I won't promise anything though.

I'd really enjoy if the group of active CM3 users and developers
would become more engaged and agile in the discussions and open tasks
and make active use of the tools and infrastructure provided (Trac, Hudson,
WiKi, etc.). And if we could use all the experience and passion assembled
here to inspire others and create more interest in this great language.

Thanks for your support and patience,

Olaf
-- 
Olaf Wagner -- elego Software Solutions GmbH
                Gustav-Meyer-Allee 25 / Gebäude 12, 13355 Berlin, Germany
phone: +49 30 23 45 86 96  mobile: +49 177 2345 869  fax: +49 30 23 45 86 95
    http://www.elegosoft.com | Geschäftsführer: Olaf Wagner | Sitz: Berlin
Handelregister: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg HRB 77719 | USt-IdNr: DE163214194