Proposed Status Tracking and Release Plan for Tomcat 3.2

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

I just checked in two documents in the top-level directory of
jakarta-tomcat, as a proposal for how we keep track of things subsequent
to the version 3.1 release.  Nothing is authoritative in these documents
until reviewed and approved by the developers on this mailing list.

"RELEASE-PLAN-3.2" is the outline of a release plan (schedule) for the
next release, modelled after the one we are using for 3.1.  In fact,
this file should be renamed RELEASE-PLAN once we are through the current
release cycle, for historical consistency.  I haven't outlined any
specific action items to be scheduled for specific releases, but I've
proposed a schedule that gets us to final release the day before JavaOne
2000 starts, which would be cool if we can do it.  The schedule requires
pretty aggressive execution of action items, because it contemplates
some sort of a release every couple of weeks between now and then.

"STATUS.html" is meant to become a living document that tracks
outstanding action items for future Tomcat development.  The idea is
that this can serve as a list of things that would be interesting to
work on, as well as a place to sign yourself up and identify other
people who are also interested in working on the same thing.  From time
to time, particular action items can be identified as being desirable to
include in a particular Tomcat release (say, version 3.2 milestone 2) --
at that point the item would be tagged in the status file (so people
know it's already been scheduled) and added to the RELEASE-PLAN under
the appropriate release.

Please review these documents and post any suggested changes, additions,
subtractions, and so on.  The outcome of this should be a process that
helps us focus on what needs to be done, holds us accountable to the
schedules we volunteer for :-), and makes Tomcat even better than it is
today.

Craig McClanahan

PS:  For those of you who are not using CVS directly, the simplest way
to see these files is to use the online CVSWEB browser:

http://jakarta.apache.org/cvsweb/index.cgi/jakarta-tomcat/

Re: Proposed Status Tracking and Release Plan for Tomcat 3.2

["Kevin A. Burton" <bu...@relativity.yi.org>]

Jason Hunter wrote:
> 
> Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
> >
> > I just checked in two documents in the top-level directory of
> > jakarta-tomcat
> 
> One document I'd like to see is a DEVELOPER-JOURNAL where someone
> (perhaps the tech lead for the project) records a short summary of what
> occurred each day.  In this journal would go decisions, official vote
> results, mailing list summaries, and things like that.  It's a simple
> knowledge management system, and what I do for all my own projects --
> even when I'm the sole developer.  It's amazing how often I forget my
> own decision justifications.
> 
> The journal will help us determine how fast we traditionally have
> accomplished things, will be used by developers to see what was decided
> while they were too busy to read the mailing lists, and will act as a
> FAQ for ourselves.  The format should be succinct but comprehensive,
> similar to a spec.
> 
> What do you think?  Have other open source projects taken this
> approach?  Considering how helpful I've found it for my own projects,
> I'm sure it'll be useful in a distributed development effort.  Anyone
> working primarily on the project could maintain the journal, but I
> propose the tech lead because (a) the person in that role has the best
> first-hand knowledge of daily events and (b) for Tomcat that person is
> Craig who's the most prolific programmer I've ever known!

The problem is that the data wouldn't be structured.  Over time it would
just grow to become wasted disk space.

Now if it were done with XML with a decent UI then that would be really
cool because we could do input validation and then run queries across
all the data.  

But then again isn't this was CVS commit messages are for? :)

I agree with you... problem is the implementation :(

Kevin

-- 
Kevin A Burton (burton@apache.org)
http://relativity.yi.org
Message to SUN:  "Please Open Source Java!"
"For evil to win is for good men to do nothing."

Re: Proposed Status Tracking and Release Plan for Tomcat 3.2

[Jason Hunter <jh...@acm.org>]

Craig R. McClanahan wrote:
> 
> I just checked in two documents in the top-level directory of
> jakarta-tomcat

One document I'd like to see is a DEVELOPER-JOURNAL where someone
(perhaps the tech lead for the project) records a short summary of what
occurred each day.  In this journal would go decisions, official vote
results, mailing list summaries, and things like that.  It's a simple
knowledge management system, and what I do for all my own projects --
even when I'm the sole developer.  It's amazing how often I forget my
own decision justifications.

The journal will help us determine how fast we traditionally have
accomplished things, will be used by developers to see what was decided
while they were too busy to read the mailing lists, and will act as a
FAQ for ourselves.  The format should be succinct but comprehensive,
similar to a spec.

What do you think?  Have other open source projects taken this 
approach?  Considering how helpful I've found it for my own projects,
I'm sure it'll be useful in a distributed development effort.  Anyone
working primarily on the project could maintain the journal, but I
propose the tech lead because (a) the person in that role has the best
first-hand knowledge of daily events and (b) for Tomcat that person is
Craig who's the most prolific programmer I've ever known!

-jh-