[jboss-dev] EJB3 Release Schedule

[Andrew Lee Rubinger]

We're pleased to announce that JBoss EJB3 is making the final push 
towards 1.0.0-GA, and will soon be implementing a timeboxed release 
schedule.

====================
|| Current Status ||
====================

Released Friday morning, 1.0.0-Beta12 of the EJB3/AS Integration Module 
(org.jboss.ejb3:jboss-ejb3-as-int:1.0.0-Beta12) is now in AS:

* trunk
* Branch_5_x
* Branch_5_0

This is likely the last of the 1.0.0-BetaX series, and pending the 
completion of all Hudson runs to expected results, will be re-cut as 
1.0.0-CR1 this weekend.

Criteria for EJB3 1.0.0-CR1 is:

* No regression in TCK
* No regression in AS TestSuite
* Passes EJB3 Integration TestSuite 100% (excluding transient failures 
and identified known issues)

After a standard 1-week(ish) incubation period, CR1 (assuming all is 
well) will be promoted to 1.0.0-GA sometime Thursday/Friday, 23 January, 
and will be integrated will all active branches of AS.  This targets AS 
5.0.1 to include EJB3 1.0.0-GA.

========================
|| Timeboxed Releases ||
========================

After the 1.0.0-GA Release of the EJB3 Projects, we will continue to 
push releases both to the community and into AS active branches at a 
resolution of twice a month[1].  The EJB3 Team has not yet agreed upon a 
formal schedule (ie. every 1st and 3rd Monday will lead to occasional 
gaps in cases where a month has 5 Mondays).  After we've set this, we'll 
reply back to this list with a commitment upon which the community and 
dependent projects (ie. AS, WebBeans) may rely.

Additionally, we'll be using a true timebox methodology[2]; bug fixes 
and feature requests that are not completed in time for release will be 
bumped to the next development cycle.  We will make every effort to not 
delay a release in order to get further improvements incorporated, 
barring exceptional circumstances.

=================
|| EJB3 Plugin ||
=================

In addition to updating AS, we'll be re-introducing the concept of the 
"EJB3 Plugin"[3].

The EJB3 Plugin is currently implemented as an executable JAR which will 
patch an existing AS installation with the latest EJB3 binaries (and 
dependent projects[4]).  Usage looks like:

    shell $> java -jar jboss-ejb3-plugin.jar $JBOSS_HOME

We will keep each release of the Plugin backwards-compatible with the 
latest release of AS.  Therefore the first release will work against AS 
5.0.0.GA, and after 5.0.1.GA is released the Plugin will target 5.0.1.GA 
*only*.  This is to:

* Give users the latest and greatest
* Limit the scope of development resources needed to continually deliver 
(by supporting only one target AS version).
* Encourage community members to embrace the "release early, release 
often" intent of .org

===================================
||Implications for the Community ||
===================================

Because we're moving to a reliable, repeatable release schedule, 
community members interested in helping the development process can be 
assured that their contributions will be made available as a binary 
within 2 weeks.  Your efforts might take the form of:

* Failing use cases / bug reports
* Unit / Integration Tests
* Documentation
* Enhancements / patches

We encourage you to get involved.

S,
ALR

References:

[1] I avoid the term "bimonthly": http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bimonthly
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_boxing
[3] http://jboss.org/community/docs/DOC-9564, once released, will be 
updated to show end-user usage separately from concepts interesting to 
developers
[4] Sometimes we must also update projects technically outside EJB3 
scope, ie. jboss-metadata, jboss-jpa-deployers

-- 
Andrew Lee Rubinger
Sr. Software Engineer
JBoss, a division of Red Hat, Inc.
http://exitcondition.alrubinger.com