On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 12:26 PM, Rob Lanphier robla@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