Rob Lanphier wrote:
There's some release planning issues that we have to sort out:
- When will we branch 1.17?
- When will we push 1.17wmf1 to production?
- When will we release MediaWiki 1.17?
Trevor and Roan believe that ResourceLoader will be ready to deploy in January. However, looking at the backlog of code reviews, and I don't think it's realistic to assume we'll have everything else ready in January. My assumption here is that we need to be through the code review backlog prior to pushing what is currently in trunk into production. Simply extrapolating from the October/November rate of code review, March is looking more like the target, and that assumes we keep up the rapid pace of review. What seems realistic without being complacent?
[...]
Longer term, everyone has stated a desire to move to more frequent deploys. I think that's a conversation worth having, but let's not have it as part of this thread.
I don't understand how you can discuss the 1.17 release / Wikimedia updating without discussing what comes next. If you branch in December and it doesn't go live on Wikimedia until March, that'll mean about 11 months since the last big site update (which was in April 2010, I think). It will also mean that there will be about four months of revisions between the branch and trunk when Wikimedia is updated. It seems like the backlog will never empty with this cycle/process.
I don't want to be the only one clinging to the past (where there were much more regular updates), but I do think people should realize that the this plan forward doesn't really lend itself to returning to the days of weekly Wikimedia updates. Wikimedia is, for better or worse, shifting to a much slower code deployment process and the community, developers, and sysadmins have to accept that, I guess. (Slower, of course, unless it's "high priority" code that has money attached to it.)
I think if it's going to be yearly updates for Wikimedia (and MediaWiki), everyone ought to be upfront about it. Realistic, accurate expectations lead to fewer complaints and a happier community.
MZMcBride