View source for STP/STP 1.0 Planning

= Introduction =

''' WIP 07 Jan 2008 '''

Looking forward to the Ganymede release, the STP hopes to release it's first formal 1.0 release. This plan outlines the main themes of development over the first 6 months of 2008 to sync up with Ganymede. The interest and adoption of STP has seen fantastic growth over the course of 2007 and it's hoped to build on that for the 1.0 release. With that in mind, the following major themes of STP are proposed:

# Integration
# Stabilization
# Feature Completeness
# Build System Completeness

So let's look at each of these themes in some detail to see what's involved:

== Integration ==

One recurring criticism of the STP is that it appears to be a "bag of bits" with no major them unification between them. While we wont be able to create a truly unified STP for 1.0, we should identify some key areas where we can start to pull together each component. The main drive of this theme will be to ensure a unified end user experience of all the various technologies that will ship with STP. The Intermediate Metamodel will certainly assist in this area, but we need to also look at how each sub-project deals with the other and the handover that occurs between them.


== Stabilization ==

With a 1.0 release we are going to have to publish extension points and API's that we are truly happy with. So a thorough review of both our extension points and public API's are required. In addition to this we need to begin cleaning up the STP bug queue. 

== Feature Completeness ==

All our features should be complete. On occasions some features have gone into the STP that need follow on activity and this has never happened. When evaluating our software users will expect a reasonable degree of completeness 


== Build System Completeness ==

This is here to ensure that we get back to full feature parity with our new Buckminster based build system. The ability to have full site generation together with integration into the Ganymede release process is vital so we don't spend large amounts of time close to release trying to build and deploy the STP.There will need to be continuous build processes in place so that our update site, download site, release notes are automatically generated. 

= The Plan =

Working back from Ganymede release dates [1], code freeze will be mid-May to allow us complete out testing, bug fixing etc in order to keep up with the final round of milestone builds that occur in May & June. The following are the tentative dates we are looking to:

* Feb 29th: Milestone 0.8 released (Ganymede M5)
* Apr  9th: Milestone 0.9 released (API Freeze date for Ganymede, M6)
* May 21st: Code Freeze (RC1)
* Jun 11th: 1.0 release with Ganymede (RC4)

Onwards to the plan.

[[ STP/STP_1.0_Plan "STP 1.0 Detailed Plan"]]

[1] http://wiki.eclipse.org/Ganymede_Simultaneous_Release#Milestones_and_Release_Candidates