On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Rob Lanphier <robla(a)robla.net> wrote:
I realize that this isn't how it's
traditionally been done, but then
again, I think our tradition has drifted. Once upon a time, trunk was
very regularly deployed in production. Providing releases was merely
an alternative to telling MediaWiki admins "just go checkout trunk;
that's what we're using". Now that we're a lot more cautious about
what we put into production, we should question whether we still need
to be even more cautious about what we release as MediaWiki.
Providing releases not an alternative to telling people to use
trunk, it was a mark of actually releasing the software (as
opposed to just having the source available). When we release
the software we're making a commitment to the end user. The
release should be something we're all proud of and are willing to
stand behind.
Trunk is not something I'm willing to stand behind and release
to the public right now. It needs lots of review (over 10k revs
since the last branch point) and lots of testing. In my experience,
we don't get a whole lot of feedback from 3rd parties on a beta
release, probably because people are naturally cautious, and
a beta still carries the "may have bugs" connotation. OTOH,
releasing to the sites tends to provide a *lot* of feedback, most
of it incredibly valuable.
You really can't beat a WMF deployment as the ultimate beta
test group for MediaWiki.
-Chad