We have taken some steps to clean up our release process, but let's nail
it down completely to avoid arguments every time we release something.
Can we agree on the following?
All new development happens on HEAD. Snapshot and alpha releases are
released right from the development branch with a TAG to mark when the
release happened.
To start the release process, we make a release branch. Say, PHP_5_3.
Once we have branched for a release there should be no large features
added. Missing functions here or there or other small things can go in.
And anywhere along this release branch we can release betas to get more
people to test. After a beta or two, when we are fairly confident we are
ready to do the final QA we roll a release candidate. At this point we
are in serious code freeze mode. Only bug fixes allowed at this point.
Once released, the release branch is used for bug fixes only. So the
PHP_5_3 branch which spawned PHP-5.3.0 is used to create PHP-5.3.1,
PHP-5.3.2, etc. Each release is a TAG on that release branch. New
development is back on the HEAD branch which is one and the same as the
PHP_5 branch when we are dealing with the latest major version. New
development, if necessary, on previous major releases happen on PHP_4,
PHP_3, etc. branches.
Some obvious things that fall out of this is that there can't be any
backward compatibility breakage in a point release (meaning 3rd digit)
unless it is directly fixing some serious breakage. There also cannot be
any binary compatibility breakage in a point release. Any change that
breaks binary compatibility automatically forces a new minor (2nd digit)
version.
I guess the sticky point here is what is a beta and what isn't. If we
can't get agreement on the above explanation and we want to push "beta"
back a step to mean a cvs snapshot without an associated release branch,
fine, let's do that, but let's clearly define that this is what we are
going to do in the future and once defined put this (or a similar)
document up on php.net that defines this process for everyone. Or a
README.Releases in the code.
-Rasmus