Parrot Developer Summit summary
Allison Randal
who joined us, it was great to meet you face-to-face (some for the first
time).
For those who couldn't join, here's a quick summary of the discussion.
Saturday we discussed the release plan for the next few years. Sunday we
continued working on the release plan, answered design and
implementation questions, and broke into smaller groups for developer or
foundation discussions.
The release plan is to continue the monthly release schedule, but twice
a year have a time-based release attached to a major version number. We
listed the most important features for Parrot, and sorted them by
logical progression (what depends on what), by target audience (who we
expect to be the primary users at particular stage of the adoption
cycle), and what we can reasonably expect to complete in a given
time-period. You can see the details of our feature sorting on the wiki
page:
https://trac.parrot.org/parrot/wiki/ParrotRoadmap
Because these are time-based releases, they have fixed dates within our
ongoing monthly release cycle. Here's the list of time-based releases,
and the focus of each one. (We may change the "X.5" version numbers for
the "half-year" release.)
- March 2009, 1.0, stable API for language developers
- July 2009, 1.5, integration
- January 2010, 2.0, production use
- July 2010, 2.5, portability
- January 2011, 3.0, independence
- July 2011, 3.5, green fields
If you don't see a particular wishlist feature on the roadmap, it
doesn't mean we won't be doing it, it only means it's not on the
critical path for the time-based releases.
It's exciting to be able to tell people with certainty that the 1.0
release of Parrot will be in March 2009, and to see from the roadmap
that we can deliver. I'm pleased and proud to have worked with all of
you to reach this point, and greatly look forward to the next few years.
Allison
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Patrick R. Michaud
> The release plan is to continue the monthly release schedule, but twice
> a year have a time-based release attached to a major version number. We
> listed the most important features for Parrot, and sorted them by
> logical progression (what depends on what), by target audience (who we
> expect to be the primary users at particular stage of the adoption
> cycle), and what we can reasonably expect to complete in a given
> time-period. You can see the details of our feature sorting on the wiki
> page:
>
> https://trac.parrot.org/parrot/wiki/ParrotRoadmap
I would like to clarify this a bit based on what I recall of the
summit discussions:
- The list of features for any given major release are what we consider
to be critical for the success of that release, not just what we
think we'll have accomplished by then.
- Just because a feature is listed for a given major release doesn't
mean that it won't be available before (possibly long before) that
time. In other words, the list is "feature X really needs to be
finished by this point" more than "don't expect XYZ to be
available before then." So, if someone feels strongly enough to
start working on a feature long before its target completion date,
there is absolutely no problem with that.
I think it's important to keep these clarifications in mind -- perhaps
I'll modify the wiki to include the above (unless there is disagreement).
I totally agree with Allison and others that the summit was
incredibly successful and productive -- I greatly enjoyed myself
and I'm looking forward to the next exciting phases of Parrot
development.
Pm
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Allison Randal
>
> I would like to clarify this a bit based on what I recall of the
> summit discussions:
>
> - The list of features for any given major release are what we consider
> to be critical for the success of that release, not just what we
> think we'll have accomplished by then.
Yes, there are items on the list that we expect to be completed or
mostly completed long before the slot where they're listed on the
release plan.
> - Just because a feature is listed for a given major release doesn't
> mean that it won't be available before (possibly long before) that
> time. In other words, the list is "feature X really needs to be
> finished by this point" more than "don't expect XYZ to be
> available before then." So, if someone feels strongly enough to
> start working on a feature long before its target completion date,
> there is absolutely no problem with that.
Very much so. And it gives us a metric of success. Success is completing
a feature sometime before the targeted time-based release. Earlier is
always a nice bonus.
Allison
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