Release Quality Control

[David Taylor]

> Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 10:24:42 -0700
> From: Joe Buck <jbuck@synopsys.com>
> 
> On Fri, Apr 18, 2003 at 06:47:31PM +0200, Gerald Pfeifer wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Apr 2003, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> > >| We could set up a special mailing list for the purpose (gcc-prereleases
> > >| or some such).
> > > Is there a reason why gcc-announce will not be appropriate?
> > 
> > Well, actually... Let's try it, for the next snapshot?
> 
> Maybe we could start it for the 3.3 release process.  It would need to
> be widely announced, and we'd need to come up with an appropriate blurb
> to set people's expectations correctly: that the tarballs being announced
> are prereleases for testing, don't use them for production; that there is
> no commitment to delaying the actual release if problems are found on
> non-primary platforms, etc.

If you're going to wait, may I suggest what gdb does?  Create a low
volume list for that explicit purpose?

. GDB has a low volume list gdb-testers, announcements of pre-releases
  are sent there as well as being sent other places.

. anyone submitting either multiple GDB bug reports or engaging in
  discussion of a bug report that they had submitted was explictly
  invited to join the list.  (I don't know if this still happens.)

  [Everyone was premitted to join the list, but since many people
  submitting bug reports didn't know about the list, and such people
  had already shown an interest (by submitting and discussing bug
  reports) in helping to improve the quality of the program, it was
  thought that they might be interested in being pre-release testers...
  so, it wouldn't hurt to explicitly invite them to join.]

David
--
David Taylor
dtaylor@emc.com, taylor@candd.org