No way to release without a milestone

[Rob Speer]

Milestones make no sense for the way my group releases software. This causes all sorts of difficulties with the Launchpad interface, including requiring us to make meaningless milestones just to put up a download link.

I have experimented with milestones. For example, ConceptNet (http://launchpad.net/conceptnet) has 3.5 and 4.0 milestones that we have targeted feature requests against.

However, releases represent what we've actually done and want our users to be able to download, which is often uncorrelated to what we wish we had done. I can't even release 4.0 beta 1 without erroneously claiming that the 4.0 milestone has been completed.

There are numerous other bugs about the fact that working with milestones and releases is so hard, such as the "Won't Fix" bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/launchpad-registry/+bug/358795. Please, for the sake of small groups who are trying to use Launchpad, make it possible to release software without doing meaningless things with milestones.

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

The (+) Create release allows you to make the milestone as you create a release. The information in the milestone is identical to the information that was once need by the release (except for the date expected). Since you can create a release at anytime wihout entering extra data, I do not think this bug is valid.

[Rob Speer (rspeer)]

True, I can make a meaningless milestone on that screen, but that's another hurdle in the way of just being able to put up a download file.

Also, if I follow your suggestion for ConceptNet (where we occasionally do use milestones in the bug tracker), we have to have two unrelated kinds of milestones: the "wishful thinking" kind that we target bugs and features against, and the "actual release" kind that we have to create in order to release a file that people can download. This situation looks particularly stupid on the timeline, where all the "release" milestones appear before all the "wishful thinking" milestones regardless of the version number.

Why not allow a milestone of "None" -- as in, we don't promise that this release resolves any bugs or features, we're just letting you download it -- and default to it?

Am I misunderstanding what a milestone is? Should I have to care what a milestone is?

[Curtis Hovey (sinzui)]

On Fri, 2009-07-17 at 22:43 +0000, Rob Speer wrote:
> Am I misunderstanding what a milestone is? Should I have to care what a
> milestone is?

The milestone has many purposes

      * Targeting work such as bugs and blueprints is one aspect. The
        launchpad-registry project uses milestones mostly for this
        purpose. It does not release
      * Other project use milestones to publish their intent to deliver
        a release.
      * Some projects use milestones as a step to create releases. They
        use the full development planing features.
      * Some project decide to create a release from a line a
        development. This sounds like how your project wants to work

You state you want to upload some files, but you also recognize you need
to group the files as a single release. A release is just noted, a
changelog and something to group files by. It is not tied to where the
code came from what preceded it or what will follow it. If your project
is successful, it will need this information. That information is the
Milestone. There was a time when milestones were not need to create a
release. Use want, no demanded this information. So everyone creating
release provided this information to satisfy users, some had to enter it
twice because they also used milestones for planning.

The solution was to unify the milestone and release. A release is a
state a milestone may achieve. it is not required.

      * The information stored in the milestone allow the download page
        to be orders bey series and release so users can find the filed
        that match their system.
      * The milestone connects the files to a branch that is the source
        of the files
      * Distros and projects that work with packages need the milestone
        information to track changes and select the correct version for
        their next release.

Milestones are required because they allow your project to collaborate
with other users and projects. Launchpad does not force a workflow. It
will require you to provide information that users of launchpad expect
to find in every project.