[Soap-Python] soaplib versioning and community process

[Burak Arslan]

brad, all,

i was going to talk about this. thanks for expressing those concerns and
provoking me to do it sooner.

On 10/06/10 18:46, Brad Allen wrote:
> Burak,
>
> It's great to see all the work you're putting into soaplib, but I'm
concerned about the approach to versioning and think we need more of a
community process for releases.
>
> In another thread you mentioned starting work on 2.0 release, and now I
see that the 2.0 is now released on PyPI.  This seems
> premature...actually I thought 1.0 was premature since the API was still
changing, the beta was released without tests passing, and I doubt if
1.0 has been released long enough for it to mature, or even get rolled
into production anywhere.
>

here's what's on my book about release tags:

alpha: kind of works. stable? maybe. maybe not.
beta: has known bugs, but otherwise stable
release candidate: passes all tests, no known bugs, torture it!
release: yay! get me booze :)

so, 2.0 is alpha. i can't make it clearer that it's not ready for
production yet. if you don't want to run my half-baked alpha software, do
this:

easy_install -U "soaplib<=1.0"

in all honesty, i don't think that's a hurdle.

as for the stabilization and maturity; not only soaplib 1.0 is not mature,
but it has known bugs. so, by the above definition, it's a beta-quality
software. the bad news is that i just can't spend any more resources on
the 1.0 branch. i will of course review and integrate the patches, but
that's going to have to be it.

so anybody who wants to see a stable 1.0 release should start fixing those
tests and send pull requests for the 1_0 branch my way. otherwise, i'm
afraid soaplib 1.0 will be stuck in beta-limbo forever.


> There are a certain set of traditional expectations about a 1.0
> release. Look at how long it took Django to get to 1.0, for example.
>

django didn't have a spec to implement. we do, and my judgement was that
the subset implemented in soaplib 1.0 already covered the basic needs. you
may not agree, and i'll respect that. but just remember what i said: it's
just a first step towards implementing a complex protocol.

> Now that 1.0 and 2.0 have been released on PyPI, does that mean we can't
go back in time and do-over?

sorry, what do you mean? i'm not familiar with this expression.

best regards,
burak