[Buildbot-devel] Next Steps for Buildbot

[Dustin J. Mitchell]

Buildbot is at a bit of a crossroads.  Work on Buildbot-0.9.0 is
moving along, but it's going to take a while.

In the interim, Buildbot-0.8.x will live on as the 'master' branch.
There will, most likely, be a Buildbot-0.8.8, and maybe more to
follow.  Tom Prince has generously offered to maintain Buildbot-0.8.x
until it is retired.

Personally, I will be focused on Buidbot-0.9.0.  I'll be merging
changes from 'master' into 'nine' on a regular basis -- this isn't a
fork.  At some point, when things are good and ready, we'll merge
'nine' to 'master' and run up to a release of Buildbot-0.9.0.

As much as possible, I'd like to see new development done against the
'nine' branch, at the least to spare us the difficult task of
forward-porting innovative new features.

We also need help hacking on nine!  In hopes of sharing the load, I
recently put together a nice to-do list for nine here:
  https://github.com/buildbot/buildbot/blob/nine/README.md

We'll need help testing the new branch, too.  In theory, 'nine' should
be functional at every commit, although we may fall short of that goal
from time to time.  We need to know when that happens!  If you have a
testing environment, or can spare the cycles for one, and are willing
to run 'nine', please do!  Bug reports in any of the usual places will
be most welcome.

So, to summarize:
 - Buildbot-0.8.x has some good releases to look forward to; and
 - Buildbot-0.9.0 will be getting a lot more attention from here on out.

Thanks, as always!
Dustin