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GraphicsMagick Development Process

In order to ensure an orderly development process, and assure the highest quality releases, a development process has been established for GraphicsMagick.

## Phases of Development

Four major development phases have been identified. These are the feature development phase, snapshot phase, beta phase, and release phase. The descriptions of these phases are as follows:

Feature Development Phase

The feature development phase is a time of rapid development. Work is normally done on the CVS trunk. Work which may temporarily destabilize the ability to build or execute the software is done on a separate development branch, which is merged into the CVS trunk once the work has been completed. During the feature development phase, CVS is the only way to access the work in progress. Before updates are committed to CVS, they should be proven to compile on at least one architecture.

Entry Criteria: Changes from any release branch are merged into CVS trunk.

Exit Criteria: Interfaces are stable, and code compiles and runs on multiple architectures.

Snapshot Phase

The snapshot phase is entered when it is decided that the work is stable enough for non-developers to test. API and user interfaces should be stable before the snapshot phase begins in order to avoid confusion. Snapshot development is done on the CVS trunk. Snapshot packages are identified by the date of the snapshot, and no CVS branching or tagging is performed to support the snapshot.

Entry Criteria: Interfaces are stable, and code compiles and runs on multiple architectures.

Exit Criteria: Code is considered ready for release. The test suite must show 100% completion for Q:8 and Q:16 quantum depths on at least three operating environments.

Beta Phase

The Beta phase is entered when the work is feature complete, the package passes all tests, and it is considered time for versioned releases. As the first step of entering the beta phase, a release branch is created off of the trunk to support all development targeting the release. The purpose of the beta phase is to wring out any remaining bugs prior to release. When a beta package is prepared, a release tag is applied to the associated release branch in CVS.

Entry Criteria: Code is considered ready for release. The test suite must show 100% completion for Q:8 and Q:16 quantum depths on at least three operating environments.

Exit Criteria: The test suite must show 100% completion for Q:8, Q:16, and Q:32 quantum depths on at least three operating environments. The current beta package is determined to be sufficiently flawless for a final release.

Release Phase

The release phase is entered when the most recent Beta is considered to be of acceptable quality for a release or bug-fixes have been prepared based on a previous release. At this time, a formal release tag is applied to the release branch, and release packages are created. Once a release tag has been applied to a release branch, that release branch is considered to be in release state and may only be used to prepare additional releases intended to correct bugs found in preceding releases. The initial release on a release branch has a two-digit (i.e. X.X) release designation. Bug-fix releases have a three-digit (i.e. X.X.X) release designation. A release designation may only be used once. If a problem is discovered with the release package, a new release number is assigned to support the corrected release package.

Entry Criteria: The test suite must show 100% completion for Q:8, Q:16, and Q:32 quantum depths on at least three operating environments. The current beta package is determined to be sufficiently flawless for a final release.

Exit Criteria: None

GraphicsMagick Testing

Verification testing is vital to ensure the correct operation of the package. GraphicsMagick is compiled, and its entire test suite is executed, in the following environments:

Solaris 9 (SPARC platform, GCC 3.3, compiled with 32 bits)

Solaris 9 (SPARC platform, Forte 7, compiled with 32 bits)

FreeBSD 5.0 (x686 platform, GCC 3.3)

AIX 5.1 (IBM xlc vendor compiler)

HP-UX 11.00 (HP C/C++ vendor compiler)

IRIX 6.5 (MIPSpro 7.4 vendor compiler)

Windows XP (built with Visual Studio .net)

Windows XP (built with MINGW)

Windows XP (built with Cygwin)

The output of any tests which do not support self-validation (e.g. the Magick++ demos) is visually inspected for correctness.

Image manipulation software that works like magic.