Re: 2.20 and 2.21 release plans

[Urs Liska]

Am Montag, den 17.02.2020, 13:25 +0100 schrieb David Kastrup:
> Ok, I think 2.20 is basically done and we should push it out by the
> end
> of this week.  

This is really great news!
I'm somewhat undecided whether it is a cause for celebration or not to
finally release a "stable" version after six years. But at the end of
the day I think we should praise those who have actually worked so hard
to make it happen. And all of us who benefit from that work might think
about what we can do to help bringing the *next* stable release over
the goal line in less than six years.

I have one side remark to that, although I'm not sure if it's
appropriate to inject it into this thread.

I haven't commented on the issue of a package loading mechanism
recently, for two reasons: I don't have any time right now, and I
thought it would be a distraction from the more pressing issues around
the build system, contribution workflow/tooling and finalizing a
release.
While it has been clear from the start that integrating a package
loading mechanism was not in question for 2.20.0, I would like to ask
if it can be considered making this go into a 2.20.x release and not
keep it on the 2.21 track as would be the natural itinerary. Doing so
(the latter) would force openLilyLib and - more importantly -
interfaces like Frescobaldi to support two alternative syntaxes of
loading packages until a 2.22 release.
So I would be glad if we could spend sufficient effort after 2.20.0 and
2.21.0 releases to discussing, implementing, and testing a package
loading mechansim sufficiently that we can integrate it not only in the
2.21.x but also a 2.20.x release.

Urs

> This leaves a few days for the translation team to catch
> up with the current state.
> 
> In particular HINT HINT HINT it gives the opportunity to native
> speakers
> of languages not as meticulously maintained as the currently most
> active
> translations to at least tackle the Changes document and maybe check
> a
> few other points of the web presence.  This is more addressed to
> people
> reading this announcement on the lilypond-devel list than to lurkers
> on
> the translations list, though of course the latter would be equally
> welcome.
> 
> What does this mean for 2.21.0?  I think we should aim to push it out
> fast afterwards, basically a few days later at most, just to get
> kinks
> with webpage/versioning from 2.20 ironed out.
> 
> I am not sure it is realistic to expect to get the translations
> merged
> into 2.21.0 already: because of the significant divergence
> experienced
> so far, I expect this to be a significant merging headache.  It would
> be
> nice to have, but not essential: this is the unstable branch after
> all.
> 
> For more extensive changes of internals and/or syntax, I would
> recommend
> to let them sit till 2.21.1 before committing, assuming that we _do_
> manage to get 2.21.0 out fast.  Why?  2.21.0 has by now quite
> significantly diverged from 2.20.0.  If something does not quite
> work,
> it would be nice to have a _released_ version to compare to, and
> nothing
> but 2.21.0 would really serve that role satisfactorily.  Particularly
> where problems are detected a long time after getting introduced,
> having
> an installable version as a reference is nice, and "it stopped
> working
> in 2.21.0" is enough of a quagmire already that we do not really want
> to
> add a lot more here.
> 
> The size of the headache basically is commensurate with how long the
> stable branch has diverged.  Hopefully we manage to find some
> combination of process and responsible persons next time around that
> delivers faster.
> 
> Nevertheless, I am glad we are getting there.
>