[crossfire] Release schedule/notes

[Mark Wedel]

  After finally finishing up the 1.10.0 release, and the discussion around that, 
quick thoughts on future releases.

In this discussion, I'm talking about minor releases from the 1.x branch, so 
this next release would be 1.11.0

  Doing somewhere between 3 and 6 releases/year seems roughly the right rate - 
not so much time is being used making releases, yet is it often enough to get 
changes out there, but not so often than a release might only have 2 changes.

  So I'd say that puts the next release in the June timeframe.  That probably 
works for my schedule, presuming I'm the person still doing the release.  I'd 
send out mail as the date gets closer.

  Other thoughts:  I'd say there is nothing prevent some micro releases of some 
components between now and then, if a change warrants it.  For example, map and 
archetype changes are quite quick to do and contain perhaps some of the more 
noticable changes to the player, so doing a micro release of those between now 
and then may make sense.  Likewise critical bug fixes in either the server of 
client would warrant a micro release (1.10.1).  I'm not sure if doing releases 
of those, especially the server, makes sense, as that is a bit more of a pain.

---
Main trunk releases:
The server is going under some major changes - I'm not sure it makes sense to do 
releases until that is sorted out.  Just from my experience with the 1.10.0 
release, it would seem that someone could otherwise be spending a lot of time 
getting it so the release aspect of it works, only to have a lot of that work go 
away as files and other paths may change.

  The client, as of right now, should be compatible with older server (eg, a 
trunk client can player on a 1.10.0 server without problems), so we could do 
releases of those.  I almost wonder if it makes sense to completely decouple the 
numbering schemes between those, and instead have a compatibility chart.  My 
expectation is that trunk client will likely be able to play on 1.x servers 
until some protocol changes are made and the legacy support for older protocol 
is removed from the client.  What this effectively means is that one day the 
trunk client could work with 1.x, and the next day it doesn't.

maps & archetypes:  These are almost one piece, as they depend on each other 
pretty heavily.  I don't believe there have been any server changes required for 
the maps & archetypes as we have them now, so releases on those could be made. 
OTOH I also don't recall seeing any major changes, so making releases of pre 2.0 
releases of just the maps & archetypes would be confusing.

  I really thing, relative to the trunk, this is a brief outline of steps:
1) Finish with the major overhaul of whatever we plan to overhaul in the trunk 
server for 2.0
2) Set up some test server(s), see how they work.
3) start worrying about making pre 2.0 releases once we have a pretty good idea 
that what we have will have some semblance to what final 2.0 will look like.