[reportlab-users] Release schedule and bug tracking

[Andy Robinson]

Happy New Year to all our users.  

Here are some notices about upcoming changes.

Impending Release
-----------------

After some debate, we've decided to concentrate on
getting a really stable bug fix release out in the next
couple of weeks.  Key goals are
 - complains loudly if you run it on Python 1.5.2 :-)
 - zero 'future warnings' under Python 2.3
 - 100% certified to run under Jython, with _rl_accel.java
 - renderPM now supports TrueType font rendering
 - ensure all demos and tools are tested on Windows,
   [?|??]n?x and Mac
 - the recent infinite loops, layout problems and other
   'bugs which matter' all closed off
 - quite a few new features in Pythonpoint
 
Sadly it is not realistic to do full support for right-to-left
or Asian languages; those issues are big.

We'll make sure daily snaphots are up so that people can
help us test, and get a good stable baseline out.

This will quite possibly have some "impact" on existing
scripts as we want to tighten up some lax usages that
have bitten us before.  We'll aim to have these documented
prior to the release with workarounds.


2. Tracking Bugs
-----------------
I am also making some policy changes. From now on we will use 
the SourceForge bug tracker, patch manager and feature requests.  
If you have outstanding bugs or patches, play safe by reminding us on 
the list and post them on SourceForge:
 http://sourceforge.net/projects/reportlab


This has NOT been driven by continual nagging from
you-know-who, but rather from reaching a level of staffing 
where I am fairly confident we can make time before
each release to properly investigate bug reports.
We were so understaffed and overworked last year
that we couldn't promise to investigate bugs that were not
biting us, but it's getting easier as we grow.  


3. Use of Sourceforge and collaboration tools
----------------------------------------------
We missed our deadlines for getting a collaboration
site up, but we did manage our server upgrades over Christmas
and New Year.  

After a bit more thought I would like to try and use
Sourceforge better before we work on Wikis or CMSes.
We'll try to set up the access controls so we can
grant wide checkin rights to a sandbox/contrib area.

If anyone out there would be willing to share the work
of patch screening, making releases,  improving documentation
or any of the other activities crucial to good open
source packages, let me know and we'll consider granting 
commit rights.

I'm still happy to set up an experimental Plone server
if people want to, but I'd like to see some people
ask for this on the list, so we don't do a lot of
work that will only get 1-2 users.

Best Regards,





Andy Robinson
CEO/Chief Architect
ReportLab Europe Ltd.
mobile +44-7976-355742
office +44-20-8544-8049