[160] in Release_7.7_team
Release, Release, Where's the Release?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dorothy Bowe)
Mon Aug 22 15:45:11 1994
To: release-77@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To:
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 15:44:47 EDT
From: Dorothy Bowe <dot@MIT.EDU>
Hi all,
This phrase is probably one of the most over-used ones, but "I have good
news and bad news" for you. That is, maybe you'll think its bad news,
but then again maybe not.
The good news is that the patch release is on schedule for early to mid
next week (around August 29th). A full list of items included in this
patch will be forthcoming, but a few of the highlights are:
MH fix
Fix for zwgc hanging in .startup files
Fix for zwgc not exiting on personal workstations
xzwrite dumps core on Suns
solaris_reconf
There is one minor change which might be worth documenting somewhere, or
at least having people be aware of it, and that is that the mh sort
command no longer also packs a folder. You have to use the pack command
instead. This affects both mh and xmh.
Okay, that's the good news. The bad news is that this is not it for the
release. Last Wednesday I met with the PPT and talked about some
release issues. We concluded that at the very least, it makes little
sense to put together a new release team for every Athena release, and
furthermore, the release does not work well when it's crammed into a
short timeframe. This means that, for now anyway, we *are* the release
team. I haven't figured out exactly what this means for a schedule
beyond this patch release, only that September is so busy with the Fall
startup that I would never try to do anything release-related then.
That makes something like October the earliest I would think about
picking up the pieces again and working on plans for the next round.
(And no, I can't imagine weekly meetings from October through August or
anything like that...)
In between now and October you should think about whether you want out
of the release and talk to your respective managers. I won't plan any
meetings and expect that anything which comes up with this release in
particular will be handled via email if at all possible. Of course, if
you have any problems or concerns particular to release 7.7, releases in
general, or what I mean by the ominous statement, "the release will
never end", :-) please feel free to let me know.
Thanks,
dot
