Policy for releasing plugins

[Jochen Wiedmann <jo...@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I would like to discuss the policy for releasing plugins. My
impression is, that most plugin developers policy can be described as
follows:

- Be careful. We could break something.
- There's a change. Goes to SVN. Fine!
- Some weeks later. Nothing happened. Ok, possibly it works. We'll
publish a "beta 1"
  version.
- More weeks later. Perhaps its time for an RC1.
- Months later. Release

I appreciate such a behavior for large projects like the Maven core. I
don't think so for plugins, however. Plugins have a completely
different characteristic:

- They are small components, typically maintained by one or two
programmers only.
- They can be controlled.
- Publishing them doesn't take much work.
- If a problem should be found, it can be fixed really fast.

In other words, a better policy for plugins seems to me to be the
"release early, release often" mantra, which we know from Perl
modules. Indeed, they can very well be compared.

What do you think?

Jochen

--
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the
majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
(Mark Twain)

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Re: Policy for releasing plugins

[dan tran <da...@gmail.com>]

I release my plugins weekly within my comp.  But
I'd like to see maven's plugin release more often as well.

-Dan



On 2/17/06, Jochen Wiedmann <jo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I would like to discuss the policy for releasing plugins. My
> impression is, that most plugin developers policy can be described as
> follows:
>
> - Be careful. We could break something.
> - There's a change. Goes to SVN. Fine!
> - Some weeks later. Nothing happened. Ok, possibly it works. We'll
> publish a "beta 1"
> version.
> - More weeks later. Perhaps its time for an RC1.
> - Months later. Release
>
> I appreciate such a behavior for large projects like the Maven core. I
> don't think so for plugins, however. Plugins have a completely
> different characteristic:
>
> - They are small components, typically maintained by one or two
> programmers only.
> - They can be controlled.
> - Publishing them doesn't take much work.
> - If a problem should be found, it can be fixed really fast.
>
> In other words, a better policy for plugins seems to me to be the
> "release early, release often" mantra, which we know from Perl
> modules. Indeed, they can very well be compared.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Jochen
>
> --
> Whenever you find yourself on the side of the
> majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
> (Mark Twain)
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@maven.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@maven.apache.org
>
>