Hello everyone,

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Marco Ciampa wrote:

Any hint on when GIMP 2.8.1 will be released?

I know that the idea of timed releases has generally not been well received in the past, but I wonder if the GIMP team would agree that timed point-releases are a good thing?

Somehow, after 3.5 years of development, version 2.8 turned out not to be perfect. Well, that stuff happens, but there appear to be another 38 bugs currently fixed in the 2.8 trunk (assuming my bugzilla-fu is worthy).

What do release managers think about, say, point releases no longer than every 3 months?

That seems to me like a decent amount of time for users to adopt the release and find the low-hanging issues, developers to address the simpler nuisances, and reasonable amount of time for people to put up with the problems while they wait for the next known release. Version 2.8 was released on May 3; by this schedule, 2.8.1 would have been released around August 3.

Chris

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 11:15 -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:

Hello everyone,

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 10:42 AM, Marco Ciampa wrote:

Any hint on when GIMP 2.8.1 will be released?

I know that the idea of timed releases has generally not been well received in the past, but I wonder if the GIMP team would agree that timed point-releases are a good thing?

Somehow, after 3.5 years of development, version 2.8 turned out not to be perfect. Well, that stuff happens, but there appear to be another 38 bugs currently fixed in the 2.8 trunk (assuming my bugzilla-fu is worthy).

What do release managers think about, say, point releases no longer than every 3 months?

That seems to me like a decent amount of time for users to adopt the release and find the low-hanging issues, developers to address the simpler nuisances, and reasonable amount of time for people to put up with the problems while they wait for the next known release. Version 2.8 was released on May 3; by this schedule, 2.8.1 would have been released around August 3.

I completely agree with everything you said. I assume you are going to help making this happen?

--Mitch

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 12:48 PM, Michael Natterer wrote:

What do release managers think about, say, point releases no longer than

every 3 months?

I completely agree with everything you said. I assume you are going to help making this happen?

I'll provide all the encouragement you require. :-)

But what's involved? GIMP releases are source-only, so it seems like it's just:
- Update any internal version numbers - Write release notes (based on bugzilla, commit logs?) - Tag a point-release branch (sorry, CVS/SVN terms) - Put the .tgz on FTP (how ancient am I?) - Update the web site.

I would think that in an ideal world, one of the autobuilders would tag/branch each successful point-release build, then one of these (say, ~75 days in) becomes the first -RC. That gives up to 2-3 weeks worth of RCs, assuming no calamitous test results.

Chris

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 13:25 -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:

But what's involved? GIMP releases are source-only,

I take it that you don't use the manual... and that you use GIMP in only one language, and, further, that the language you use is US English... :-)

In addition there are installers for supported platforms, not just a source distribution.

There's also testing... including changes to dependencies in configure scripts, for example.

I would think that in an ideal world, one of the autobuilders would tag/branch each successful point-release build, then one of these (say, ~75 days in) becomes the first -RC. That gives up to 2-3 weeks worth of RCs, assuming no calamitous test results.

That part is closer to what happens.

Encouragement is one thing... and of course a good thing... but being a proactive release manager is another.

Liam

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Liam R E Quin wrote:

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 13:25 -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:

But what's involved? GIMP releases are source-only,

I take it that you don't use the manual... and that you use GIMP in only one language, and, further, that the language you use is US English... :-)

It is true that I don't follow the i18n/l10n aspects of the project. Without giving it too much thought, I would assert that point releases _should_not_ require manual changes. Updated translations, etc, seem like they can be released independently, almost as a different project.

String changes within the program may be required, true. It's unfortunate that these aren't easier to maintain. Again, I don't know what's involved, but it seems like it'd be slick if string changes were automatically emailed to people watching certain languages and they could just email back the corrections (or edit some wiki page, or...?).

But that aside, I might suggest that incomplete translations already exist and so a x.y.1 point release that breaks translations could be fixed in the regularly-paced x.y.2 point release.

There's also testing... including changes to dependencies in configure scripts, for example.

Not sure what this entails ... wouldn't the autobuilder find dependency problems? Hopefully when bugs are marked 'fixed' the code checked in has been tested. And the -RCs would be for wider, non-automated testing.

Perhaps the autobuilder should spit out a .deb/.rpm to make testing -RCs even easier ... or even a new cross-compiled .exe for some .msi/wix spec.

Encouragement is one thing... and of course a good thing... but being a proactive release manager is another.

Sure. If your tools can get you 90% of the way there, that's better. And if you release regularly, that alone makes it easier (and often gets your tools even closer to 100% automation).

And I'd also suggest that you allow yourself to be a bit sloppy. With regular releases a little slop is less painful, and distros can backport whatever fixes they think are critical for their releases...

So, if that makes sense, what's missing?

Chris

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012 01:13:08 +0200 Marco Ciampa wrote:

On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 02:01:41PM -0400, Liam R E Quin wrote:

On Tue, 2012-08-21 at 13:25 -0400, Christopher Curtis wrote:

But what's involved? GIMP releases are source-only,

I take it that you don't use the manual... and that you use GIMP in only one language, and, further, that the language you use is US English... :-)

Please...

Already the gettext toolchain keep all the dirty work done for us and the translation work is just a matter to type a couple of commands (literally: intltool-update LANG; emacs LANG.po ...) to see the untranslated strings and to fix them.

The GIMP manual is completed by a couple of months now and its content should not change between any 2.8.x point releases...

The only un-gettexted tool is the windows installer: I have completed the italian translation of the installer strings in a couple of hours...

Just report here the language missing or incomplete. A translator will pop up.

Hi Mario,

I am not sure if this info is helpfull or not - just referring to your proposal to report here:

Parts of the German version manual seem to not be in German yet, e.g.: http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/de/gimp-tutorial-quickie-jpeg.html

Cheers Karl-Heinz

On Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:04:14 +0200 Marco Ciampa kindly fwd'ed my mail:

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 10:50:11AM +0200, Karl-Heinz Zimmer wrote:

Hi Mario,

Marco,

I am not sure if this info is helpfull or not - just referring to your proposal to report here:

Parts of the German version manual seem to not be in German yet, e.g.: http://docs.gimp.org/2.8/de/gimp-tutorial-quickie-jpeg.html

Cheers Karl-Heinz

Bouced to the GIMP doc mailing list ... some translator will handle it as soon as possible...

Hi guys,

forgot to add: Is help needed?

If you are still looking for assistance in translation to German, I might be able to spend a few evening hours every here and then ...

Cheers Karl-Heinz

On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 11:37:06AM +0200, Karl-Heinz Zimmer wrote: [...]

forgot to add: Is help needed?

If you are still looking for assistance in translation to German, I might be able to spend a few evening hours every here and then ...

Yes, we always need help - definitely for German translations and probably for most (all?) other languages too.

If you have a cloned copy of the gimp-help-2 repository you can provide patches (made with "git export-patch"), but using the "Damned Lies" (http://l10n.gnome.org/module/gimp-help-2/) should also work.

Thanks in advance :-)
Ulf

Nichts macht deutlicher, dass die Religion von Menschen erschaffen
wurde, als das kranke Hirn, das sich die Hlle ausdachte, ...
		-- Christopher Hitchens, "Der Herr ist kein Hirte"
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