Releasing Pidgin

[Luke Schierer]

On Sat, Apr 07, 2007 at 03:20:34AM -0500, Kevin M Stange wrote:
> Mark Doliner wrote:
> > How's this for a plan?  We announce to translators and packagers as soon as we
> > can.  We get the pidgin.im web page smoothed out, document all the crazy new
> > changes either on a new page somewhere or on the wiki, then announce on Sunday
> > night once we're ready.

Documenting changes sounds like a good thing to go on the wiki.  We can
link to it in the news post if need be.

> > 
> > I don't think we should release another beta.  I think we should just get this
> > puppy out the door as-is and see what happens.  But I DO think we should wait
> > a week before actually releasing.  That should let the more hard-core people
> > play around with what's in our Monotone repository.

A week before release it is.  I propose a Thursday release, even though
that's slightly under a week. 

> 
> > 
> > Where to host downloads?  We can't serve files from pidgin.im.  SourceForge
> > may not like us using them only for file downloads (I really don't know), but
> > I think that is our best option for now.  We should create a pidgin project on
> > SourceForge (or maybe try to rename the existing Gaim project?) and host our
> > downloads there.  In the future we can look into other options (I'm definitely
> > in favor of moving away from SourceForge entirely, if it's feasible.)

I have seen other projects do this in esense.  Projects that don't
really use the bug trackers, and have their own domain somewhere. 

> 
> I think this is fine, but again offer the suggestion that if we do
> decide we dislike the SF release system, I am most likely able to
> contributed a mirror of packages via work in case this is ever desired
> in the future.  Gathering 3 or 4 "sites" willing to do so would probably
> be fine for Pidgin.  Again (so there is no confusion), I am not saying
> we need to do this, just making known that there are strings I can pull
> to help in this area.

We do dislike the SF release system, but we like the free and well
distributed mirroring.  At least, I have heard any number of us involved
with uploading complain about the release system.  

Anyway.  If you look at the SF download stats, we use between 2 and 10
GB/hour, between 50 and 100 GB/day, that being a big range I know, but
that being even across this last year with few releases and those far
between.  When we release, the numbers get higher.  That's a TON of
traffic.  I have no doubt that we *could* set up a group of mirrors that
could handle that, but I think it would be a hassle to set up, maintain,
and get people to actually use different mirrors ourselves.  I strongly
think SF will be willing to let us just use the release system. As I
said, I've seen projects more or less doing that already.  I would
rather off-load that work, at least for now.  

> 
> > 
> > I nominate Luke for emailing the translators and packagers (either by bugging
> > Sean to do it or just sending an email out yourself).

Willdo.  I should be able to get those out soon, but then I'll be
unavailable for much of the weekend.  It is, as you noted, Easter.

luke