48ReleasePlan

Mapserver 4.8.0 was released on February 2nd, 2006. The release plan is still available below for reference.

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This 4.8 release plan was voted by the TSC. Information below may still change slightly as the release progresses.

Planned Dates

Based on our experience with the other 4.x releases, we will plan for 3 betas over a 6 weeks period after the code freeze. This will lead us to a final release mid December:

• Feature freeze - Oct 31st, 2005
• 4.8.0-beta1 - Nov 4th (done on Nov 7th)
• 4.8.0-beta2 - Nov 18th (done on Nov 23rd)
• 4.8.0-beta3 - Dec 2nd (done on Dec 16th)
• 4.8.0-rc1 - Dec 9th (done on Dec 22nd)
• 4.8.0-rc2 - ... (done on Jan 9th, 2006)
• 4.8.0-rc3 - ... (done on Jan 25th)
• 4.8.0 (final) - Dec 16th (done on Feb 2nd, 2006)

CVS Tags/Branches?

• The main trunk (HEAD) in CVS is currently the 4.7 development version that we plan to release as 4.8
• The stable CVS branch for this release will be called "branch-4-8" (not created yet).
• Current proposed date for creating "branch-4-8" is the date of the 4.8.0 release (around Dec 16th)
• If post-4.8 developments require earlier branching then please bring up your request for branching on the -dev list.
• The betas will be tagged in CVS as "rel-4-8-0-beta1", "rel-4-8-0-beta2", ... and the releases as "rel-4-8-0", "rel-4-8-1", etc...

Bugzilla Conventions

In order to facilitate querying the bugzilla database for bugs that still need to be addressed for this release, we try to stick to the following conventions:

• Bugs to be addressed for this release must have their target milestone set to "4.8 release"
• Bugs/Enhancements? that can't make it in this release but that we may want to address at a later time should be marked with the "FUTURE" target milestone with a comment explaining that the bug is postponed and if possible a quick analysis
• The target milestone on a bug should be set by the developers (bug owners) and not by the users (reporters).

Other good practices when dealing with bugs:

• Please file bugs for any non-trivial bugfix or change to the software. This is so that we keep a trace for future reference of all bugfixes and changes that were made (why and how).
• Please mark bugs ASSIGNED as soon as you start working on them
• Please when marking a bug fixed include a comment describing the fix, the version of the software in which it was done, and any other relevant information. This will just make our lives easier in a few months/years when questions come up about this issue.
• When committing to CVS, please include the bug number in your CVS change log comment.
• Keep documentation in mind when fixing/changing things: if you cannot update the documentation yourself then please create a documentation bug describing the new feature/change and which document(s) should be updated.

The following query returns all currently open bugs that are tagged with the "4.8 release" target milestone: http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/bugs/buglist.cgi?target_milestone=4.8+release&bug_status=NEW&bug_status=ASSIGNED&bug_status=REOPENED

Related RFCs

• MS RFC 2: Creating line features and/or shapes using WKT
• MS RFC 3: Layer Plug-in Architecture
• MS RFC 4: MapServer Raster Resampling
• MS RFC 5: MapServer Horizon Reprojection Improvements
• MS RFC 6: Color Range Mapping of Continuous Feature Values
• MS RFC 8: Pluggable External Feature Layer Providers

Open Tasks

None.

Completed Tasks

Once completed, the tasks above should be moved down here.

• Documentation updates - Coordinate with all documentation contributors to bring all documents up to date for the release
  • Resp: Kari
  • Bug #:
  • Status: Completed by the website team

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