future wpa_s/hostapd release plans

[Jouni Malinen]

On Thu, Sep 01, 2011 at 03:10:27PM +0200, Johannes Berg wrote:
> Oh, and because this is a change, Jouni proposed calling the first one
> that will come out of this "1.0" (first release 1.0.0), followed by
> "1.1". (or did you mean 1.0 being the first release, followed by 2.0,
> and fixes as 1.1, 1.2, ...?)

I think we could as well drop the extra value.. We've survived almost
ten years without changing the "0." prefix in the version number, so
clearly there has not been much need for it. In other words, we could
fork hostap-1.git and release 1.0, 1.1, and so on from there and the
next fork would be hostap-2.git with 2.0, 2.1, ...

And just to be clear on what the version numbers mean here, the 1.0
version would actually map to the first stable release in the past
(e.g., 0.7.3 in the case of 0.7.x branch). In other words, the
development release concepts goes away (or well, the possible 1.0-rc1
style releases could obviously be similar, but still, x.0 is the first
"stable release").

> First of all, when will the first branch happen? I'm not sure -- we need
> to put infrastructure in place on our side to make it happen and
> familiarise ourselves with the release scripts etc., so that might take
> a little while. I'm thinking maybe some time in November, and then the
> next ones can be in May 2012, November 2012 etc.

That sounds fine to me. Usually I have tried to create the stable branch
before starting some larger cleanup or new features in the development
branch. Though, it is always possible to pick an older commit from the
tree for the fork, so we can do that after the fact if something larger
starts showing up in hostap.git.

> Secondly, we don't have a fully functional test bed, so when/how do we
> call what branched as 1.0 actually release-worthy? Jouni -- what's your
> process there? Just "generally I'm happy"?

This has been pretty informal in the past, but things have been calming
down in the stable branch for longer time before making the first stable
release. I have usually tried to verify basic functionality for both AP
(hostapd) and station (wpa_supplicant) functionality, but there has not
really been extensive testing just for the purpose of being able to make
a new release. I've also tried to run the source code through couple of
static analysis tools before each release and address whatever issues
show up. I should be able to do that with 1.0, too, once we get closer
to the release time.

I have wanted to build an automated test setup for a long time, but
haven't really ever found enough time to complete that.. In practice,
there are number of projects that track hostap.git changes and run
automated tests, so some testing gets done there. However, the separate
release branch may actually get quite a bit less testing "by default"
unless someone changes from tracking hostap.git to that branch.

For this particular 1.0 case, it would be nice to run through some P2P
certification tests taken into account that P2P support is one of the
largest changes between 0.7 and 1.0. In theory, I have a fully automated
test setup for it, but it is not dedicated for this purpose, so I might
as well call it manual.

I'm not sure whether I would actually be using the stable branch for
projects that I'm involved with since I've already gotten very used to
picking builds directly from hostap.git.. As such, the question of
testing the release branch may fall more for those who are planning on
using it until we have a fully automated testbed in place.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA