Releasing IronPython

By Michael Foord -
Dave Fugate, IronPython tester and the man in charge of releases, gives us an intriguing look into what is involved in releasing a new version of IronPython. Releasing software is always a pain, for any company or project, but even more so for Microsoft.
While it's still fresh on my mind, I'll share a bit of interesting info about IronPython releases. What will blow most peoples' minds is that on average it takes us about five full working days to produce and signoff on a release for CodePlex. For example, we started the release process for IronPython 2.6 Beta 2 on Friday morning and released it today. "Dave, when all you have to do is build the 'release' configuration of the sources already on CodePlex how can it possibly take this long?" you ask. Three words: testing and Microsoft bureaucracy…err I mean "Microsoft processes".
Dave Fugate is also wondering what you want him to blog about...
While I've been waiting for a huge build to finish unzipping on a shiny new Windows 7 test machine, I've been looking over my own and other IronPython team members' blogs. I've come to the conclusion that there are far more comments for posts not dealing with Python, and in many cases the IronPython posts aren't getting any comments at all. The missing interaction isn't necessarily limited to technical posts either from what I've seen.

Is this because we're doing a great job at covering IronPython topic xyz or because xyz just isn't that interesting? If it's the latter, what would you like to see more of and less of?

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