[pmwiki-announce] Pre-announcing 2.2.0 non-beta release, new release manager

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Thu Jan 15 23:12:23 CST 2009


First, the headline:  PmWiki 2.2.0 (non-beta) will be released
this Sunday, January 18th.  It will likely be essentially the 
current beta version of PmWiki -- potentially with some minor bugfixes
but no other expected major changes from the current beta65 version.

Now, some other details:

As many of you know, 2008 was a very hectic year for me, both on a
personal level and a professional one.  In many ways I ended up being
overcommitted for the year, and that left me little time for PmWiki
itself.  As the year progressed I realized that to be fair to PmWiki
I need to get some others more deeply involved, and in the past couple
of months I've been arranging to do that.

Petko Yotov has graciously agreed to serve as PmWiki's "release 
manager" and site maintainer.  Over the past couple of years I've
had many opportunities to interact with Petko via email, IRC, and
even in person, and I trust his ability to keep PmWiki moving in
the directions I'd like to see it go.

As PmWiki release manager, Petko will be able to make bug fixes,
add new features, and issue PmWiki releases and documentation
updates.  This should mean that I'll no longer be the bottleneck
to these sorts of tasks.  I'll closely monitor the changes that
take place, and I expect that Petko will consult with me before
any significant changes to the PmWiki core, but the mechanics of 
making changes and issuing releases will no longer solely depend 
on my availability.

As pmwiki.org site maintainer, Petko will have the ability to
enable recipes, skins, and other features on pmwiki.org and 
perform any other tasks needed to keep the site functioning
smoothly.

Also, based on my experience with several other projects, I am
now a firm believer in the value of time-based releases -- i.e.,
releases that occur on well-defined dates regardless of the
number of feature changes involved.  Thus, I'm going to direct
that PmWiki adopt a regular release schedule.  Since Petko will
be the person performing the releases, I'm going to let him to
determine the frequency and timing to be used, but I ask that
we have a new release of PmWiki at least once per month.

(Just because we have time-based releases doesn't mean that
there can't be "interim" releases that aren't on the schedule--
I just want to make sure that we know that there's always a
new release of PmWiki every month.)

Hopefully these steps will help PmWiki to evolve and grow to
better meet the needs of the overall community.

I don't view this at all as significantly curtailing my involvement
with PmWiki -- indeed, I think it will allow me again participate
in PmWiki development better than what I was able to do in 2008.
In particular, it allows me to offload most of the "detail work"
that often needs to be done so that I can focus my energies on the
bigger picture items and larger opportunities to be addressed.

We may discover that we want to expand the release manager and
site maintainer duties to include other people or roles, but we'll
start with this now and see how well it works.

Over the last month or so I've been adjusting the pmwiki.org setup
to make it easier for Petko (and potentially others) to work on it
and maintain it.  In the past to make things easier on me I've had
pmwiki.org mixed in with my personal site and account, but obviously
that doesn't really work any longer if others will be pitching in.  
I should be finishing up the migration in the next day or so, at which 
point I'll work on the release.

As mentioned at the top of this message, unless I have some sort
of personal emergency this weekend, the 2.2.0 release occurs on 
Sunday, with whatever version of PmWiki we happen to have then.  
Yes, there may be some features or bugfixes that ought to be in 2.2.0
that aren't there; if so, then Petko will be able to get some quick 
experience in doing bugfixes and releases (with my help and guidance, 
of course).  So, although we'll release 2.2.0, it's entirely expected 
that it may be quickly followed by 2.2.1, 2.2.2, etc. releases as
Petko and I clear out the backlog of things to be done.

I also have some ideas about improving PmWiki issue tracking, but
will bring those up in another message over the next couple of days.

I hope this helps everyone out -- I know it will help me.
All comments and suggestions are, as always welcomed.

Thank you to everyone for your continued support of PmWiki,
and I'm looking forward to being able to be more active again in 2009.

Pm



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