Mousepad 0.5

There have been many changes since version 0.4.2, so I think it would make sense to plan for the next release (milestone, blockers, and so on).

changed the description

Sure! I've been thinking about it for a while, thinking I should open a new issue, so thanks for doing it! But I'll wait for some wise comments before I say more, because I lack experience on this subject

Agree we should do a release before Xfce 4.16. We should probably stop doing any non-essential large changes soon to let it stabilise before Nov/Dec and see if any major bugs crop up.

Aside from updating the versions in the sources and running make dist, I have no idea about making releases for Xfce apps. I tried it once but it involved some kind custom/non-standard web-based things I never used before (mocha?). Luckily for previous years after Nick stopped working on Mousepad, other generous Xfce contributors have taken care of releases.

@Tamaranch are you game for trying to figure it out? I think it might require you to get at least one other account setup to do it.

If not, and nobody else volunteers, I can try it again. I admittedly didn't spend a lot of time trying.

are you game for trying to figure it out? I think it might require you to get at least one other account setup to do it.

I'm willing to try, but I'm going to need some help, at least to give me the basics, and obviously for the creation of the necessary accounts: @andreldm, can I turn to you for all this?

Concerning the freeze before version change, I think we could stop at the present state, excluding !46 (merged) which is not essential and implies too much rewriting if we consider all its consequences (mentioned in its header). On the other hand, I already have a small commit of "bug fixes" that I will put in another MR and that will have to be included in Mousepad 0.5 (see !47 (merged)).

I also think that we could create a dedicated branch, so as not to slow down developments on the main branch, according to the classical procedure (it seems to me).

Also, in the future (because I think this time it's too late), when there are new developments, maybe we could create minor versions more often, so that at least the users of rolling releases use them and can report bugs. Because here, I think our population of testers for new developments before version change is quite small.

About the release process itself, there is some doc on https://docs.xfce.org/contribute/dev/make-a-release#build_the_tarball . As the CI now run make distcheck on every commit, at least you know that the command is not failing ;-)

You need an account on https://releases.xfce.org/login/request (the ssh-key part is legacy, you can insert random characters), then we can enable your account for mousepad.

Thanks Romain, I'll look into it

mentioned in merge request !47 (merged)

assigned to @Tamaranch

@matt @lastonestanding Do you think we should wait a little longer before to bump version? I don't have the impression that a major bug should follow, even if we can never be sure, of course. In any case, the fixes I've added since the opening of this issue were quite minor.

You should definitively release a new version, you added tons of features and bugfixes :) If there is new bugs, you can still fix and release new versions!
Please register to https://mail.xfce.org/mailman/listinfo/xfce-announce list with your registered mail on release.x.o to send a nice announcement mail automagically with the release.
You can add yourself to mousepad/mousepad-dialogs.c btw

Ok @skunnyk, thanks! I'm already registered on this mailing list, so it should be good.

Regarding the about dialog, could you create me an alias, e.g. gael at xfce.org, if it is available? (or anything else you find more appropriate) I don't think anyone will try to contact me through this, but it's probably better to put a valid Xfce address.

I will wait a few days to hear at least Matthew's point of view, and if there is no objection in between, I will release the new version.

Alias to your protonmail created.

Thanks!

@Tamaranch It's your call if you're willing to try and make the release. I haven't had much time lately to keep up on all the changes and test, so whenever you think it's ready is fine by me.

Ok, so let's wait a few days before merging !59 (merged) and if there is no problem by then, I will release the new version.

Would it make sense to do a pre-release first? This could help with missing translations and maybe some testers could have a look at the upcoming release.

I had thought about it when this thread was opened, and maybe it should have been done at that time, but now I don't know, because there are already quite a few pending MRs that I'd like to see merged and tested in turn.

Maybe we're not at a 5.1 yet with this, but these are already pretty significant changes, so I think that by addressing a few more pending feature requests, we could release a 5.1 in not too long, that would contain the eventual patches for the 5.0.

But this kind of process is quite new to me, so maybe my estimate is not so good. What timeframe did you have in mind for a pre-release before going to 5.0?

Since some distributions will package this new version as stable release, I was thinking that a pre-release or RC could be helpful to give testers like one week time to do some general testing.

If it's for a short enough time like that, then yes why not. Is there any particular naming or numbering that we should respect in these cases? And/Or a special message to the packagers in the announcement mail?

I've read https://www.xfce.org/about/releasemodel, but Mousepad is not really concerned. Maybe "0.5a1" (or something like that) as version number and a message indicating that it is a pre-release before 0.5 would not be too bad?

You can release 0.4.90, we did that a number of time for xfce apps.
Latest xfdashboard did that too: https://mail.xfce.org/pipermail/xfce-announce/2020-November/000924.html

This is what I was looking for, thanks! (I should have been a little more attentive to the announcements…)

mentioned in commit 48901715

No oddities with 0.4.90 so far.

@matt @skunnyk Did you try out the pre-release yet?

Using it from git master, everything looks ok (except for the left padding in menu items), even compilation warnings have been solved, very nice!

Thanks! I'm thinking of letting the weekend go by, and if there are no objections by then, release the new version.

Sorry I haven't had a chance to do any testing lately, please don't block on me.

Thank you all!

closed

@Tamaranch nice work, many thanks!

changed milestone to %0.5.0