Improve our release process: we need fewer surprises.
Apologies for submitting this with no text: I wanted to grab ticket legacy/trac#20000 (moved) while it was available.
This ticket will be about ways to improve our release process. My current major complaints about the last series have been:
- 0.2.9 began too large, and took too long to get clarity on must vs should vs could.
- 0.2.9 had us delay our freeze date by 1.5 months. Should we have seen that coming earlier?
- During the 0.2.9 series, we managed to "forget about" too many items and have them "appear" on our radar with less flexibility than we'd like.
- 0.2.8 took far too long between freeze and stability. Why?
- 0.2.8 has had a nonzero number of post-release regressions
- 0.2.7.7 never shipped, and probably shouldn't ship as it stands.
- 0.2.7 is in a zombie state right now.
- 0.2.7 shipped with a nonworking ed25519 voting algorithm.
- Versions earlier than 0.2.7 should really be starting to decommision. Why are they still around? What can we do to get more uptake?