[glob2-devel] glob2-0.8.22: What went wrong. How to improve. What to do now.

[Kai Antweiler]

Talking about glob2-0.8.22

What went wrong:

 - I should have looked into the bugtracker again before ending the
   glob2 test phase.

 - Because we constantly update our working directories, we don't
   notice portability bugs in autotools related regions.

 - We didn't recognize other serious bugs during our test phase.

 - Bradley had to make some decisions during the release, that could
   have been made before the release.




How to improve:

 - In our test phase we could produce release candidate tarballs and
   deb-files right from the start.  Then we can have early feedback
   And user that don't use cvs can help us debug.  An automated
   script that produces tarballs/deb-files every day, if cvs changed,
   would be nice.

   (btw: How about a general cvs snapshot so that non-cvs users
         can profit from new features and help us testing.     )

 - Testing phase must be longer.

 - We must test compatibility between games, maps and campaigns of the
   last release to the new one.  Except when we deliberately break it.

 - We should release more often, so that the release process becomes
   natural.




What to do now:

 - Put up a new tarball in the wiki and a note that this one is
   more portable.
   (I created a tarball, but I don't know how to upload.)

 - Close alpha22-rc and start to work for a bugfix release alpha23.
   Either in two seperate repositories:  1.new code, 2.stricly bugfixes.
   Or in one repository.  In this case we have to decide, if we want
   to produce a bugfix release as quickly as possible or if we want
   new features as well.
   Because some bugs involve game loading and introduced incompatibility
   and Bradley is working on this anyway as a new feature we have good
   reason not to hasten to a new release.

 - Use CXXFLAGS="-g -O2" because our current release is buggy.
   When we release a bugfix release we can use "-O3".

 - What we do must depend on how much workforce we have now.
   I'm going to spend less time on glob2 again until summer.
   Shifting all the work onto Bradley an scheduling for a release
   next weak would be fair.

 - most serious bug right now - I think - is the bug that joe found
   that can crash glob2 when you repair an building.  I have attached
   an autosave game to my last mail on that thread.  If someone could
   take care of that bug soon, it would be worth to put it into current
   release, or to do the alpha-23 release now.
   You can use: "gdb --args src/glob2 -nox games/<nameOfTheGame>.game 0 1"

-- 
Kai Antweiler