Re: Octave 5.0 Release

[Rik]

On 12/10/2018 12:28 PM, John W. Eaton wrote:
> For version 5 and future releases, I would like to avoid pushing too many
> last minute changes and would prefer to go ahead with a release in
> January rather than delay.  We've delayed in the past and ended up trying
> to fix everything.  I think that's because when we announce a release is
> coming, everyone chimes in with their favorite bugs and feature requests
> and we end up trying to add a lot of new features and make everything
> perfect all in a rush.  Making a lot of changes a the last minute is
> stressful and time consuming.  We make mistakes.  Then we delay more
> because of more bug reports coming in and end up making releases after
> 18-24 months instead of ~12.  By making yearly major releases with bug
> fixing releases following 2-4 months later, I hope to make this a
> smoother and less traumatic process.
>

I want less traumatic too, but everyone is going to code right up until we
say "pencils down" and do a code freeze.  I just don't see us changing
human nature.  Rather than trying to limit the scope to small bugs (a
subjective criteria), maybe we should just move the code freeze sooner so
it gives us more time to test and verify things.

--Rik