Server Test Series - Outlived useful life?

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

Constantine A. Murenin suggested to me privately, and I was just 
thinking the same thing today while simultaneously describing the same 
release in three places (Change Log, Server Test Series announcement, 
and the XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-17 announcement), that perhaps the Server 
Test Series has outlived its usefulness.

The Server Test Series lives here:
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/devel/shadow/

The Change Log lives here:
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/devel/shadow/changelog.html

Perhaps it is time to do the following
======================================
1) Change the Server Test Series name to "Server Development".

2) Stop posting the XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 releases.

3) Stop sending TestXXX announcements.

4) Add links to the source for the current server release to the 
XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX announcement.

5) Reformat new Change Log entries to refer only to the 
XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX package, rather than the XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 file.

6) Remove installation instructions for XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 from the 
Server Test Series (soon to be Server Development) page.  Instead 
describe how to get the latest release from setup.exe.

7) Start releasing the xwin-YYYYMMDD-HHMM.tar.bz2 source code via 
setup.exe.  This will follow a little later.  The only thing included in 
this source release would be xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xwin/* (roughly 130 
KiB).  This is the bulk of the Cygwin-specific code.  Everything else 
eventually finds its way into either XFree86's CVS HEAD or into our 
xoncygwin CVS HEAD on sourceforge.net.


Reasons for the change
======================
1) It takes time to maintain the XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 releases, yet they 
do not seem to be benefiting anyone.

2) It used to be true that there were sometimes XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 
releases that were never released as an XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX package. 
 This is no longer true because I either release an 
XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX package that is marked as 'test', or I just 
release trivial changes as the new 'curr' version.

3) The XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 release scheme predates installation via 
setup.exe.  We have been installing via setup.exe for almost exactly 17 
months now.

4) The whole notion of having two different names for the same release 
is probably confusing the he*l out of some people.

5) I get the feeling that very few people are using the 
XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 releases.  Those few that are could just as easily 
start using the XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX releases.  They could even 
manually ftp the XFree86-xserv-4.3.0-XX release and unpack it by hand if 
 they want the old-style of release installation :)

6) I always post the XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 release to my space on 
www.msu.edu and I put a direct link to the files on there.  I also 
mention that the releases are distributed via the sources.redhat.com 
mirror network and I tell where to find them.  However, 
XWin-Test[101,102,103].exe.bz2 were not posted to the mirror network 
until today and no one complained that they were missing.  This leads me 
to believe that no one is getting the XWin-TestXXX.exe.bz2 releases via 
the mirror network.


Reasons not to do the change
============================
1) ??? (Can't think of any)

2) Unless 3 or more people speak up in support of the current 
double-release scheme (with very good reasons that justify my spending 
extra time on each release in order to somehow save them much more time 
in return).


Comments?  Support?  Disdain?

Harold