[CF-metadata] Editing/publishing workflow (Hattersley, Richard)

From: Hedley, Mark <mark.hedley>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 16:38:03 +0000

Hello CF

I think this is an excellent proposal. In particular it would be very useful for the conclusion of a request for change (ticket) to include the explicit change to the CF conventions documents including review and commit.

Being able to access the latest development version of the conventions document including all the completed changes since the last release would be a particularly valuable capability.

mark
________________________________________
From: CF-metadata [cf-metadata-bounces at cgd.ucar.edu] on behalf of Hattersley, Richard [richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk]
Sent: 20 March 2014 14:22
To: 'Schultz, Martin'; cf-metadata at cgd.ucar.edu
Subject: Re: [CF-metadata] Editing/publishing workflow (Hattersley, Richard)

> Instead of immediately releasing "1.7", there would be a, say six months period where we have "1.6" as official version and "1.7-beta" as test candidate for the next release

If we combine this with continually updated and published conventions documents then I think we're on to a winner.

To summarise so far, the workflow could be:
 - Discussion takes place on a ticket/pull request.
 - Pull request is merged in to the next development/alpha version. This automatically updates the published alpha version.
 - At some point a new beta version is made and published. (This action only modifies relevant version numbers embedded in the document, e.g. in the title page.)
 - In the unlikely case of a fix being required to a beta version then that will be done by merging directly to the beta version. The fix will also be applied to the current development version.
 - Some number of months after a beta version is released (or last modified?) the beta status is removed.

Important points which would still need agreement:
 - Where would modification discussion take place? (e.g. trac ticket/pull request)
 - When are new beta versions are created? (e.g. time based/mailing list concensus/committee vote)
 - When would a beta version be promoted to full status?

>From the perspective of a single document modification, it will first appear in the development version, then it will appear in a beta version, and finally the beta version will be promoted to a full release. For example, chapter 9 (discrete sampling geometries) would have been published as "1.6-alpha", then "1.6-beta", then "1.6".


Richard Hattersley
Expert Software Developer
Met Office FitzRoy Road Exeter Devon EX1 3PB United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1392 885702
Email: richard.hattersley at metoffice.gov.uk Web: www.metoffice.gov.uk
Received on Tue Mar 25 2014 - 10:38:03 GMT