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Posted to dev@activemq.apache.org by John Sisson <jr...@gmail.com> on 2006/03/24 00:52:08 UTC

[discuss] Improvements in release info for next RC

Trying to put myself in the shoes of a user who is not heavily involved in the project..

IMHO, in RC2 we should aim to improve the information included with the release so users can quickly get up and running.

Also we should try to provide similar information that other ASF projects provide in their releases.

Such as:

* Migration notes (e.g. change of package names for users who currently are using the codehaus version, anything else that they must know to migrate to this release from older releases)

* Notes in the README.txt file pointing users to where they can see the release notes (preferably included in a RELEASE-NOTES-4.0-RC2 file (like what Geronimo has in the 1.0 release)

* Have sections in the release notes covering the following topics (See Geronimo 1.0's for an example)
    - Overall Project Status ( a lot of users will not know what the incubation stuff in the STATUS file is all about)
    - Certification Status (is this a relevant topic? Is there a test suite from Sun we use other than the J2EE TCK in Geronimo?)
    - Significant changes since the previous release (a summary of main new features/improvements etc.)
    - Significant Missing Features
    - Known issues
    - Security warnings (is there anything the user needs to be aware in relation to security - do they need to tighten it up) 
    - Warnings about non-production libraries included in ActiveMQ (e.g. a beta version of Jetty)
    - Specific Issues, Features and Improvements fixed in Version 4.0-RC2 (an extract from JIRA's release notes)

Comments?

Regards,

John

Re: [discuss] Improvements in release info for next RC

Posted by John Sisson <jr...@gmail.com>.
James Strachan wrote:
> Great idea! Thanks for volunteering :)
>
>   
Your welcome :-)  Could anyone comment on some of the sections below 
(e.g. certification, what happens there).
> BTW we've a wiki page that describes the migration issues as well as
> new features in 4.0 for users coming from 3.x here...
>
> http://activemq.org/Changes+in+4.0
>   
Ahh, I was only looking at what was in the RC binary as most ASF 
releases have all the info in the release binary.

Guys this doco is great stuff (having links in the Changes+in+4.0 page 
to further info on each new feature etc).
> Then each release usually gets a release note like this, which has
> some of the things you suggest - though there's lots more good ideas
> you've mentioned we should add
> http://activemq.org/ActiveMQ+4.0+M4+Release
>
> The thing thats really missing is including all this documentation
> inside the distro. I'm more worried about sorting out the
> Apache/Confluence issue - e.g. am really hoping we can install Pier's
> confluence plugin to keep a static HTML site in sync with confluence,
> then we can clean up the layout & CSS and then maybe do a wget/copy to
> include all the HTML inside the distro.
>
>   
Agree that using Pier's plugin is a higher priority so we can have the 
doc with the release, as not everyone will download distributions from 
the ActiveMQ web site where the doco is (e.g. they could download via a 
mirror, or a repo).

Regards,

John
> James
>
> On 3/23/06, John Sisson <jr...@gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> Trying to put myself in the shoes of a user who is not heavily involved in the project..
>>
>> IMHO, in RC2 we should aim to improve the information included with the release so users can quickly get up and running.
>>
>> Also we should try to provide similar information that other ASF projects provide in their releases.
>>
>> Such as:
>>
>> * Migration notes (e.g. change of package names for users who currently are using the codehaus version, anything else that they must know to migrate to this release from older releases)
>>
>> * Notes in the README.txt file pointing users to where they can see the release notes (preferably included in a RELEASE-NOTES-4.0-RC2 file (like what Geronimo has in the 1.0 release)
>>
>> * Have sections in the release notes covering the following topics (See Geronimo 1.0's for an example)
>>     - Overall Project Status ( a lot of users will not know what the incubation stuff in the STATUS file is all about)
>>     - Certification Status (is this a relevant topic? Is there a test suite from Sun we use other than the J2EE TCK in Geronimo?)
>>     - Significant changes since the previous release (a summary of main new features/improvements etc.)
>>     - Significant Missing Features
>>     - Known issues
>>     - Security warnings (is there anything the user needs to be aware in relation to security - do they need to tighten it up)
>>     - Warnings about non-production libraries included in ActiveMQ (e.g. a beta version of Jetty)
>>     - Specific Issues, Features and Improvements fixed in Version 4.0-RC2 (an extract from JIRA's release notes)
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>>     
>
>
> --
>
> James
> -------
> http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/
>
>

Re: [discuss] Improvements in release info for next RC

Posted by James Strachan <ja...@gmail.com>.
Great idea! Thanks for volunteering :)

BTW we've a wiki page that describes the migration issues as well as
new features in 4.0 for users coming from 3.x here...

http://activemq.org/Changes+in+4.0

Then each release usually gets a release note like this, which has
some of the things you suggest - though there's lots more good ideas
you've mentioned we should add
http://activemq.org/ActiveMQ+4.0+M4+Release

The thing thats really missing is including all this documentation
inside the distro. I'm more worried about sorting out the
Apache/Confluence issue - e.g. am really hoping we can install Pier's
confluence plugin to keep a static HTML site in sync with confluence,
then we can clean up the layout & CSS and then maybe do a wget/copy to
include all the HTML inside the distro.

James

On 3/23/06, John Sisson <jr...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Trying to put myself in the shoes of a user who is not heavily involved in the project..
>
> IMHO, in RC2 we should aim to improve the information included with the release so users can quickly get up and running.
>
> Also we should try to provide similar information that other ASF projects provide in their releases.
>
> Such as:
>
> * Migration notes (e.g. change of package names for users who currently are using the codehaus version, anything else that they must know to migrate to this release from older releases)
>
> * Notes in the README.txt file pointing users to where they can see the release notes (preferably included in a RELEASE-NOTES-4.0-RC2 file (like what Geronimo has in the 1.0 release)
>
> * Have sections in the release notes covering the following topics (See Geronimo 1.0's for an example)
>     - Overall Project Status ( a lot of users will not know what the incubation stuff in the STATUS file is all about)
>     - Certification Status (is this a relevant topic? Is there a test suite from Sun we use other than the J2EE TCK in Geronimo?)
>     - Significant changes since the previous release (a summary of main new features/improvements etc.)
>     - Significant Missing Features
>     - Known issues
>     - Security warnings (is there anything the user needs to be aware in relation to security - do they need to tighten it up)
>     - Warnings about non-production libraries included in ActiveMQ (e.g. a beta version of Jetty)
>     - Specific Issues, Features and Improvements fixed in Version 4.0-RC2 (an extract from JIRA's release notes)
>
> Comments?
>
> Regards,
>
> John
>
>
>


--

James
-------
http://radio.weblogs.com/0112098/