Milestone

A milestone is a build with certain features implemented. A milestone build goes through a week of testing and stabilization before being released.  

Completed Milestones downloads.

Charter

Deliver sets of features to NetBeans users early and regularly to get feedback on the features. Perform stabilization of development version of NetBeans and allow us to compare reality of what is implemented to our plans.

How often	Implementation phase - 4 weeks followed by 1 week stabilization phase.
When	NetBeans 6.0 - see the schedule.
Coordinator	Coordinates, reports, announces releases and checks the availability of the milestone build on netbeans.org.
Implementation Phase	During 4 weeks implementation phase we are supposed to: Implement features planned for given milestone in trunk Merge bigger features from private branches to trunk after thorough testing Inform about features slipping from current milestone to next one
Milestone Stabilization	Trunk daily build is announced on Monday to be tested for milestone stabilization week: Unless specified otherwise stabilization is performed at trunk. NetBeans QE tests daily builds (sanity, manual, and automated testing on multiple platforms) Community volunteers are encouraged to test as well Development engineering stabilizes IDE. Fix as many bugs as possible (use priority), not only Stoppers are fixed Testing takes whole week. During this time users can report Stoppers to Coordinator. Stoppers are tracked under special milestone umbrella issue
Milestone Branch	The milestone branch is created on Friday evening CET always.
Fixing Stoppers	Coordinator asks responsible developers to fix all Stoppers during the stabilization week Developers commit fixes into the separate milestone CVS branch when stabilization week is over After last fix, new build is created Coordinator confirms all fixes are tested
Test Results	Milestone report  is created by Coordinator New and noteworthy feature description is updated to reflect what's in the milestone and what has slipped to the next milestone Coordinator writes "Don't"s for the milestone (annoying highly visible bugs that are not stoppers) Bug summary is provided
Announce Milestone	Coordinator announces completed milestone: Email to nbusers@netbeans.org and nbdev@netbeans.org Updates Milestones index page and Milestones download page
Milestones	We are running milestones for NetBeans Dev (trunk). We used Q-builds for previous releases (NetBeans 5.5-)

Expectations:

• Code line is in a testable state. All risky integrations done before milestone stabilization needs to be tested prior merge to trunk.
• Highly visible bugs - have to be fixed in the next milestone
• Stabilization is a real stabilization period during which the focus is on bug fixing.
• Developers are expected to resolve all potential Stoppers before the stabilization week.
• All Stoppers must be treated as high-priority bugs and fixed as soon as possible.