Build, Test, Deliver

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi all,

For a long time we have needed a clear way to explain what we have been
doing, how we do it and what our goals and road map are. When I was in
Brazil a few months back David Wheeler discussed our progress,
development model and goals with Bruno, Dalibor and me. As an outsider
to our development community he was able to give us a clear picture of
what we were actually doing. He has a nice writeup of the whole event at
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/fisl2005.html#javaimp
We discussed how to put down how we Build, Test and Deliver everything.
And I asked several people and groups for input. But it is hard to get
consensus on what are the essential things. Especially because we really
wanted to put it all down in just 2 pages so it could be used as a quick
reference for new people. Or used as a flyer at conferences.

Recently I spoke to various people who were happily surprised that
various things we helped build just worked in their latest Ubuntu and
Fedora Core installation. Their surprise made me realize that we have to
do a better job of communicating what we have done and how we are
delivering it. So I just updated the document that we started during
FISL to our current status and road map. I didn't get it down to 2
pages, but 3 pages isn't bad for a start. I cannot thank David enough
for his patience and SouJava for bringing us together. But all mistakes
in the final document are mine. This is clearly a first release, so
please send corrections, additions, better pictures, translations, etc.

A PDF and OpenOffice (sxw) version can be found at 
http://developer.classpath.org/support/
I tried to export it as XHTML, but the result was not very readable.
Help converting the document to other formats is highly appreciated.

I hope this document can be a basis for more specialized support and
marketing documents for our efforts. So please feel free to adapt it to
your own needs and audience.

Cheers,

Mark