$Id: RELEASE_PLAN_2_0.txt,v 1.7.2.1 2003/07/18 13:39:13 oglueck Exp $

Release Plan for HttpClient 2.0 (revised)
-----------------------------------------

Administrivia:

This document describes a plan for a 2.0 release of the
Jakarta-Commons HttpClient component (for the remainder
of this document, simply "HttpClient").  Per the
Jakarta/ASF guidelines
(http://jakarta.apache.org/site/decisions.html), this
document doesn't mean anything until accepted by the
relevant committer community via a lazy majority vote
(hereafter, simply "lazy majority").  Once accepted, it may
be replaced by an alternative plan, again subject to lazy
majority approval.

Non-binding votes (votes cast by those outside the relevant
committer community) are welcome, but only binding votes
are significant for decision making purposes.

Objective:

The objective of the 2.0 release of HttpClient is to
provide a stable and robust release focused on standards
compliance, design clarity, forward compatibility, and ease
of use (i.e., with the intention of providing a stable
foundation for the further evolution of the HttpClient
component). Specifically, the 2.0 release seeks to
introduce and evaluate changes based upon the following
(ordered) criteria:

 1. Freedom from defects (deviation from the documented or
    reasonably expected behavior).

 2. Compliance to RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) and related
    specifications.

 3. Interface and design consistency and clarity, ease-of-
    use, and ease-of-extension.

 4. Forward compatibility. I.e., the ability to add support
    for currently unsupported aspects of the relevant
    specifications or to add support for features that can
    be reasonably predicted without "breaking" the external
    (and to a lesser degree, internal) interface of the
    component.


The 2.0 release should also include:

 * Adequate documentation (including both API-level/JavaDoc
   documentation as well documentation suitable for use
   on the Jakarta-Commons site)

 * A substantial unit and functional test suite suitable
   for ensuring the quality and compatibility of release
   2.0 and subsequent releases.

 * A clear demarcation of the "internal" and "external"
   interfaces within HttpClient, as defined in the
   VERSIONING_GUIDELINES.txt document at:
   http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/~checkout~/jakarta-commons/VERSIONING-GUIDELINES.txt

 * Releases will be done according to:
   http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/releases.html

   
Release Manager:

  Jeff Dever (Starting July 31, 2002)


Voting:
 <---- Please return this portion with your vote ---->
[X] +1    I am in favor of this plan and I will help
[ ] +0    I am in favor of this plan, but I am unable to help
[ ] -0    I am not in favor of this plan
[ ] -1    I am opposed to this plan being executed, and my reason is:
 <---- /Please return this portion with your vote ---->

 
Feature/Fault Tracking:

BugZilla will be the mechanism for tracking features and faults
(ie: bugs).  When the new Scarab system becomes available, Scarab
will replace BugZilla in this role.

The previous 2.0 release plan called for a time ordered development
strategy.  There were set dates for given phases of the implementation.
This approach will be abandoned in favour of a feature completion 
based development plan.

Milestone development will begin immeadiately on approval
of this release plan.  All repository changes that are non-trivial 
will require a bugzilla bug or feature enhancement request.
It will be the responsibility of the release manager to categorize
bugs/features into release versions, but will always remain
subject to the will of the majority.  In order to declare that a
release has been reached, all bugs/features categorized into 
that target release must be completed and a vote must pass 
subject to lazy approval.

The following procedure will be followed:
1) All changes must be motivated by a bugzilla change request.
2) Patches constructed according to standard practice should be 
attached to the relevent BugZilla bug.
3) A committer can then commit the patch to the repository.


Milestone Development Phases:

2.0 Alpha development
Designations: 2.0A1, 2.0A2
During the previous period of development, many new features
were added, depenancies were changes, interfaces were impacted.
During Milestone development, the nature of the changes will
focus on:
a) interface changes
b) functionality additions
c) fault fixing

2.0 Beta development
Designations: 2.0B1, 2.0B2
Development will be focused on quality and stability.  No new
major features will be added, with the following change types
being the most prelevent:
a) fix faults with accompayning test cases
b) additional test cases to improve functionality
c) improve documentation

2.0 Release development
Designations: 2.0RC1, 2.0RC2, 2.0
When all features are complete and all reported bugs have been fixed,
a release candidate (RC) build will be released.  Any reported bugs
that are targeted for the 2.0 release will be fixed and a new RC
build will be released.  After a week of no changes, the last RC
build will become the 2.0 release with the following changes only:
release version, aside from:
a) change the release tag in the build.xml/project.xml
b) update the site documentation to indicate that there is a release

Post 2.0 Release development
Designations: 2.0.x
Following the release, only Bugzilla tracked bugs with attached
patches will be commited to the repository.  These patches must
only:
a) fix faults with accompanying test case(s)
b) improve documentation