[Biopython-dev] Rolling new releases

[Peter Cock]

On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 1:20 PM, Brad Chapman <chapmanb at 50mail.com> wrote:
> It would also be worth thinking about what the worst parts of
> building the releases are and seeing if we can automate or eliminate
> them. A few things that I can think of:
>
> - Remove support for older python versions, which would eliminate
>  all those windows installers. I will write more about this in your
>  other thread.

That makes almost no difference, its just one extra line to do at the
command line:

c:\python23\python setup.py bdist_wininst
c:\python24\python setup.py bdist_wininst
c:\python25\python setup.py bdist_wininst
c:\python26\python setup.py bdist_wininst

Yes, you also have to build and test on each version of python, but
honestly, once the build environment is setup doing the Windows
release on three versus four versions of Python isn't worth worrying
about.

> - Eliminating the beta releases. Biopython is developed as stable
>  in Git/CVS, so gets testing that way on developer machines. Are we
>  getting enough feedback from betas to make them worthwhile?

For Biopython's move from Numeric to NumPy, I think doing a beta was
worthwhile.  Maybe the feedback from the 1.50 beta release wasn't that
big, but it didn't take that much effort, and it focused us ready for
Biopython 1.50 well.  Beta releases are also good for any Windows
users, for whom setting up the build environment is quite a hurdle, so
running the latest code from the repository is more difficult.  Beta
releases also give us more press coverage - and gives us a clear way
to ask people to try out particular new stuff.

> - Automate building the docs nightly/weekly on biopython.org. If the
>  Tutorial/epydoc stuff is a lot of work, we could work up a script
>  and cron to eliminate this part.

Again, building the docs is pretty trivial.  We have in the past
deliberately NOT updated the online copies, so that it is in sync with
the latest release.  I suppose we could have two copies on the
website, the "latest release" and the "nightly code".

Peter