[python-committers] Python 3.6 Release Schedule Details

[Terry Reedy]

On 10/2/2015 3:41 PM, Ned Deily wrote:
> On Oct 2, 2015, at 10:20, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>
> wrote:
>> On Thu, 01 Oct 2015 22:24:18 -0400, Ned Deily <nad at acm.org> wrote:
>>> Another change has been to add a fourth beta and drop the third
>>> release candidate.  My gut feeling from the past several releases
>>> is that a lot of feature code does not get checked in until close
>>> to the b1 feature code cutoff so that extending the beta phase
>>> should result in more testing exposure for all features.  And I
>>> would like to reduce the amount of churn during the release
>>> candidate phase: a worthy goal is to make no changes after rc1,
>>> so that an rc2 would be be made only if absolutely necessary.
>>
>> I would like to be wrong, but I think this is unrealistic.  The
>> reality seems to be that there are a significant number of people
>> (especially on the Windows side, if I'm guessing correctly) who do
>> not test until we get to RC1.  IIRC we had a number of changes
>> between RC1 and RC2, and a non-trivial number of changes between
>> RC2 and RC3 this time around.
>
> I would like to be right but we won't know for sure either way until
> we get there.  In 3.5.0, there were major changes to the Windows
> installation process and there is still some fallout from those
> changes that will be addressed in 3.5.1.  I'm hopeful that most of
> those issues were one-time things and that we can also learn from
> 3.5.0.  I plan to emphasize earlier testing of the betas and want to
> set expectations that, when we call something a release candidate, we
> really intend to be able to release it.  If it's not ready, then we
> may need to do another beta.  Release candidate releases are costly
> for all involved.  I'd like to see us try real hard to keep them to a
> minimum.

I agree with making the effort.  I believe there have been releases with 
just 2 rcs.  The schedule looks good to me.

tjr