System of releasing new Jabbim client versions

Introduction

Jabbim client is project developed by very small group of people who desperately need your help. Nowadays, we're looking for coders and designers. If you can help us with any piece of work, contact us on MUC jabbim@conf.netlab.cz (feel free to use English). Thank you.

Release of new version

Considering current situation with releases, Jabbim team decided to prepare this document to help developers and testers to easily release new versions of Jabbim client.

Version release will be spread into two weeks long period.

Code Freeze

Project code will be frozen, that means no new features will be added. Developers will focus on debugging and finishing things such as language translations etc.

During the code freeze no function requests will be accepted into currently released version.

Time: First week.

Separation of code branch

Version branch in SVN will be separated from main code branch and this separated part will be marked as new version.

Time: Weekend between first and second week.

Release candidate testing & working on next version

In this phase installation packages for Windows and GNU/Linux distros will be created, this packages will be offered to testers and will be marked as RC. If needed, serious bugs will be fixed and new RC will be made (e.g. Jabbim 0.5-rc2). Also release messages and articles will be prepared in this phase.

In the meantime of release candidate testing developers will work on new version.

Time: Second week.

Official releasing and promotion

After two weeks of testing the last RC version will be marked with new number and released as official new version build. Installation packages will be also officialy released. Promotion messages will be sent to major news servers. Also a special team of people will be prepared to help new Jabbim users.

Time: One week of active promotion in media.

Written by Josef Halíček (josef.halicek@njs.netlab.cz)