[Python-Dev] whither PEP 407 and 413 (release cycle PEPs)?

[Terry Reedy]

On 6/3/2012 5:02 PM, Nick Coghlan wrote:

> The one thing I actually *would* like to see change is for the cadence
> of *alpha* releases to be increased to match that of maintenance
> releases (that is, I'd like to see Python 3.4a1 released at the same
> time as Python 3.3.1: around 6 months after the release of 3.3.0). I
> think keeping the trunk closer to a "releasable" state will help
> encourage a more regular rate of contributions and provide earlier
> deadlines for big changes (e.g. it's significantly easier to say "we
> want to have the compiler changes in place for 3.4a1 in April" than it
> is to say "we want to have these changes in place by April, but that's
> just an arbitrary point in time, since the nearest release deadline
> will still be at least 12 months away". Scheduling things like sprints
> and bug days also becomes more focused, since they have a nearer term
> goal of getting things fixed for an alpha release that's only a few
> months away rather than one that's more than a year out).

I like this idea. The main thing that makes alpha releases not 
'production' releases is not having more bugs, because they generally do 
not, but instability of new features. So I think this might have many of 
the benefits of the non-accepted PEPs with much lower cost.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy