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A New Roadmap

posted May 18, 2011, 6:56 PM by JC Hulce   [ updated May 27, 2011, 9:04 PM ]

The UGR project has really taken off. With that popularity, there are lots of people asking for the next release. Our releases have been really irregular for several reasons:

  • Chris and JC, the two main drivers behind this project, are high school students. Their schedules are unpredictable.
  • We had absolutely no idea what we were getting into when we started this project, and just started pulling dates and ideas out of thin air.
  • There are lots of unexpected hang-ups and issues. Everyone is still learning as far as the programming goes.
  • We want to deliver on software quality, and won't release an update if it doesn't work

For that reason, we are laying out a new roadmap and development schedule that should address several of those issues. This is still in drafting and may change.

The new plan

The new release sequence is proposed as follows:

  • A new Major 0.X.0 release every 3-4 weeks, delivering significant new features and bugfixes
  • A new Minor 0.0.X release 1 week after the major, additional minor bugfixes one week after that if needed. This will deliver minor new features and bugfixes.

Development schedule:

  • Blueprints and bugs must be drafted and targeted to a milestone 1 week before it is due, 2 weeks is preferred.
  • An update must be fully in dev channel for testing 2 days before it is due, 5 days is preferred.

What this does

This schedule gives us the freedom to:

  • Breathe
  • Test updates more thoroughly
  • Have time for unexpected stuff

What about 1.0.0?

1.0.0 was supposed to be out today. However, there are several problems with that:

  • The system (mostly GNOME 3) isn't anywhere near stable enough. We want our 1.0 to be as stable as possible
  • There are lots of finishing touches that aren't done yet, like shell extensions, themes, an iso, etc
  • We didn't have time to do everything.

We will deliver 1.X.X as a major release when everything is stable enough. For now, we plan to have the next major, and a cd image, out within the next week.  

You can view and comment on this on our wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UGR/SaneRoadmap

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