Re: [avrdude-dev] Release schedule?

[Michael Mayer]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 00:27:24 -0500, Brian Dean wrote:
> Yes, I had mentioned that with all the relatively nice changes that
> went in, we should do a release soon.  But with WinAVR release being
> pushed back, I don't see any great rush to get out a new release.
> When it's ready, it's ready - I'm fine with sometime in January if
> that works for others.

IMHO it is (virtualy) always a good thing to release often. I think only a
very small minority of users is willing to deal with cvs and compile it
themself. IMHO most people will just install the precompiled binaries and
try it - exactly one time. If they are not satisfied with the results, they
won't give it a second chance but looking out for a different solution.
("Ahh, forget about this buggy open-source-sh*t, nothing works, better use
real tools" ;-)

The recent changes are major improvements in functionality and speed, IMHO
big enough to justify a fresh release 4.3.0. Later, after additional
cleanups and polishing, a (maybe even better?) release 4.3.1 may follow -
nothing gets lost and nobody will get hurd due to an ealier release date.


> I think we should continue to polish the
> recent changes and cleanups in progress and go ahead and work in any
> of the new features that have been discussed recently like part
> autodetection and being able to set the baud rate from the command
> line.

At least the autodetection will need more time as the actual structure is
far away from something I would call "pretty code" ;-) It is only a quick
hack, don't wait for this for this release. Things will be getting better
after the proposed code cleanups.

IMHO it is better to present a useful (but unperfect) release now and a
(maybe) perfect one later than staying with 4.2.0 for a long time and just
release the (maybe) perfect one later.

just my 2ct

  Michael