2012/05/11

Release timing

I finally pushed Gauche 0.9.3 out of door the day before yesterday---something I've been thinking I'd get to do "soon" for the last few months. There hasn't been big changes for a while and I thought it was quite stable and ready.

The day after the release, I found that I couldn't build git HEAD with 0.9.3 on Windows. Damn. I have Jenkins running on Linux that checks self-build, but the bug was in Windows-specific code. It doesn't affect ordinary users who just install Gauche (building from a release tarball is just fine), but it's inconvenient for developers, so I quickly wrap the fixed version as 0.9.3.1.

The day after that, somebody notified about a build failure if Gauche is configured with sjis or eucjp character encoding. I introduced the bug when I supported out-of-tree build but it did't affect utf-8 build. I pondered whether I'd just say "apply this patch if you want sjis/eucjp Gauche". But well, I've just went through packaging process so many times (including testing), it's just as easy to make another release---0.9.3.2.

I feel that the difficulty of releasing mostly comes from the fact that I'm not used to it enough. If it were everyday thing, I'd just "know" what to do and could avoid the pitfalls almost unconsciously. With the pace of one release in several months, however, I need to go through details consciously, keep checking if I'm not missing anything. That's a lot of mental burden.

It seems that there's a "release admittance" parameter, which increases if you know the process well but decreases as the time passes. The parameter is maximum when you've just went thorough the process. ("Admittance" is EE jargon: It's a reciprocal of impedance. It shows how easy the release process is.)

Releasing 0.9.3.1 and 0.9.3.2 were so easy since my release admittance was still high.

On the other hand, there's a "release pressure"; as the time passes and unreleased changes accumulates, the pressure increases.

(I think the pressure gradually saturates, since if there are already so many unreleased changes, the relative importance of one more unreleased change decreases. I suspect this curve actually decreases if I extend it further---if there's no releases for years and everybody you know has started using git HEAD, you won't feel much pressure for the next release.)

I always feel I've waited too long for a new release; the release happens when I couldn't hold the pressure any longer, but at the time my admittance gets too low and I have to plow through the process against high resistance.

Probably the optimum time of release is the peak of Y*P.

That is, when the pressure and easiness gets well balanced.

My feeling is that it is somewhere between 1-3 months after the release. I aim at that range for 0.9.4 (crossing fingers).

Tags: 0.9.3, release