Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Release Engineers

The talk today on cross-project-issues-dev about JAR signing, update sites and getting booted from a release sure brought back memories. This release, GEF was able to migrate to Nick's common modeling build. This is a big deal.

You see, during Europa I was in the exact same position. I was the release engineer for GEF and had to deal with all these release engineering issues. I was lucky to have JAR signing and pack2000 optional in Europa as GEF did not get these things done. The GEF downloads site did not have the phoenix look. I had a battle with the update site. I could go on. We say it is no big deal to complete all these little details, but until you try, it is a big deal.

The most important aspect with the common modeling build is that there are now more projects using it than I have fingers. Everytime there is one of these releng issues, rest assured all the projects using the common build can work together to get it fixed. And when the common build supported all the Ganymede must do's, we all get a free ride.

Thanks again goes out to Nick for his release engineering support.