[Vtigercrm-developers] 4.2.4 where to start?

[Richie]

Hi!

I do agree that there is considerable confusion right now wrt the forge and the 
4.2.4 patch.

I would suggest that we make separate teams responsible for the forge and then the 
4.2.x patch. 

One of the main reasons why things are the way they are is simply because
we did not expect to release any more patches post 4.2.3. Now, there is a clamor
for that which, as I just mentioned, had not foreseen. 
I also do agree that it was not an ideal behaviour to directly put all the
fixes on top of the 5.0 head base. 

Since then, we have come a long way and too much water has gone down the
bridge.

As I see it, we have some options which I mention below :-

a) Let us hold our head above water for sometime more and wait for 5.0 to be
out. I do not expect that 5.0 will take till summer to stabilize. I do expect that it
will take at the max April to be out as of today. We are not going to pump 
in any great features as we used to do earlier. So, that is a saving!  

b)   The amount of effort going on to give patch4 is not small and I feel
it is better to fix things on a case by case basis. I am trying here to make
things simpler and should have a plan by the end of the day. We can take
the fixes that we have put into the Dev3 release and integrate on top of
the 4.2.3 release or vice-versa. That should solve most of the issues. However,
I need to check the effort-estimate here.


Matt, there was never any intention to cause so much pain. We did what we
could at that point in time and hence we are here where we are today. Just
to remind you, we had been talking of the forge since long and also had 
asked for help. Mike Crowe took up the cudgels volunteering his time and
has given us a first cut forge. Then, we had Fathi suggesting gforge. 
So, there is yet another change. These are learnings on-the-run.
We make did with what we had at that point in time. 

Secondly, there is/was/will be no intention of ignoring anyone, regardless
of them being developers/non-developers/etc. vtiger crm is 'WE' based and
not 'vtiger core' based . Our core strength is the community and as I have 
said earlier, we solely believe - United we stand, divided we fall.

 Apropos the bugtracker, yes, it is complicated, I guess - mess is another 
way you can put it. But then, all these were properly announced in due course 
of time in the proper forums. The bug tracker is currently keeping the 
5.0 in mind.I will ask my team to post the 'Legends' used to make sure that all of us
are in the same page.

Please note, I repeat, all of this is simply because we did not intend to
release 4.2.4. This, is yet another on-the-run demand that we are facing, hence
it is painful. I do not deny that we did not follow proper industry wide standards
but we are willing to learn. JLee and JeffK have been asking for the release namings changes
and we are working on those. We have changed the release naming as a start,
the source code naming was incorrect, I agree and proper action will be
taken to correct it.

We are more than okay with having volunteers take up responsibility
for the release handling, bug fix handling , etc. The more hands
we have, the better it is. 

Matt: Thanks for venting out what you exactly feel. I do share your 
frustration. What I have written above is the exact happenings.
I do not shy away from any blame. Yes, there are issues and 
I do take ownership for them. The issues are there not because
we did not fix it, but because we did not know the right way of
fixing it and what we have now is a result of what we did to 
fix it in our own in-house manner. I am willing to learn, any team
needs me, I will be there, just say the word.

Finally, I still respect you Matt. There is no 'hate' for you anywhere only
respect. These are flaws that you pointed out in the system.
That is only fair.

Bottomline: I take all responsibility for this mess Team and am willing
to fix them too! 

Richie




----mmbrich at fosslabs.com wrote ---- 

I've got to vent.  This is a fsck'ing mess.  There is no way to filter
bugs on bugs.vtiger.com to know what is valid and what's not for a
certain release number(not that I can see anyways).  Feature additions
are listed as show stoppers/critical and it's an all around mess.
Everyone who's complained about current development process/tools used
are absolutely right and we _have_ to fix this.  If you can help out
fathi with the new forge, it would go a long way towards hitting the
goal of better tools and would be a great way to contribute if you're
not into writing code.  If you write code please step up for 4.x maint
help.

As far as the project management is concerned, something has to change
or we're going to see a fork in the near future just to straighten this
mess out and get a proper structure, the writing is on the wall.  I am
all for listening to users but if you ignore the developers the project
will fork.  This may all seem a bit harsh but consider it a
consolidation of all the other complaints about these topics in one
flame ball.

Hate me all you want, but please, let's just fix this.  Open to all
suggestions about how to get started and what goals to set for the next
4.x release.

matt

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