[Project-managers] Important project management update

[Ted Ralphs]

Hi all,

Time for another progress update! Thanks to your recent efforts, we are 
making great strides in improving the organization and management of the 
repository. It seems that most project managers have now created a 
stable version and release of their projects, as well as updating their 
externals so that their project no longer depends on the trunk versions 
of other projects. Thank you again for your patience with this rather 
involved process---we realize the learning curve may have been rather 
steep.

Now that we have created a stable version of each project, there are 
just a few final steps we need your help with before we can leave you to 
develop in peace  :).

1. First and foremost, we would like to ask you to direct your users to 
download only stable versions and releases from now on. This should make 
it easier for users to report bugs and for developers to fix them. 
Exactly how you recommend that your users download your code is up to 
you, but some suggestions are contained on the wiki page we have set up 
to describe release maintenance procedures (check the section on "What 
to Tell Users"):

https://projects.coin-or.org/BuildTools/wiki/pm-svn-releases

Also, please direct your users to the BuildTools wiki for general help. 
These wiki pages will likely soon be morphed into an uber-project for 
general COIN help at some point in the near future.

2. We will soon put in place a system for automatically creating 
tarballs of any point releases you copy into the releases/ directory of 
your project. This will be done automatically for you unless you 
specifically request otherwise. If you prefer, we can provide you with 
instructions for manually creating tarballs from any directory of your 
choosing at any time. Once we put this system in place, we will no 
longer be automatically creating daily tarballs for every project. If 
you would like daily tarballs to be created for your project, we ask 
that you make a specific request for this (e-mail ladanyi at us.ibm.com).

3. We recommend that once you have created a stable version and directed 
your users there, you merge your development branch back into your trunk 
and use trunk for development (branching as necessary). The procedures 
for this are again described on the BuildTools wiki page cited above.

Thanks again for your help and please let us know if you have any 
questions about this.

Cheers,

Ted
-- 
Dr. Ted Ralphs
Associate Professor
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Lehigh University
(610)758-4784
tkralphs at lehigh.edu
www.lehigh.edu/~tkr2