Is there any chance of getting a timeline for future SDK releases, and if possible what features are planned for them (or at least the next release, in case you actually have target dates for more than one)? If there isn't a formalized release schedule, I'm formally registering my vote that there be one. I think the benefits to both Roku and the developer community would be immeasurable.
Now, I'll outline my perfect world idea of how this would function
🙂Please excuse the redundancy below.
Roku adds a feature to the developer site to allow for toggling which firmware is running, the latest public or the latest developer release. The developer release is the preview of new features that will be in the new public release, which is submitted to developers to test for bugs and develop against before the new release is public.
Public releases are scheduled every 4-6 months, and ideally 30 or more days before the public release is scheduled, the feature set is frozen and a developer release is generated (hopefully there have been a few before this as well), and the developers can use this to test for bugs in the implementation and test their apps against.
7 days before any public release, there's a complete code freeze and no NEW bugs (that haven't already been decided to let through) get submitted that would stop the release.
The benefits to this to Roku are:
* A built in beta tester audience, and one that will really stress any new features.
* Less bugs
* Lag time between new features/releases and third party apps that make use of them will be reduced significantly
* Increased developer participation and community
The benefits to the developers are:
* Visible progress towards new features
* Increased involvement in the release process
* Less bugs
* Ability to target new releases before they are public
In addition I still think having a developer wiki would be a good idea, and I'll add to that a formalized location to submit and track bugs would be useful as well. In fact, a bug tracker could easily handle feature requests as well and be sorted appropriately into proposed feature, targeted feature, etc. Some bug trackers allow voting,...
P.S.
I'm NOT trying to tell you how to run your business, I just think the above would be awesome, and wanted to present my case. I understand that there's quite a bit about the internal structure of your development in both technical and procedure terms that I don't and can't know, and that may preclude any or all of the above from being feasible. Still, I figured I'd put it out there in case you were investigating new ways to do the releases....
-- GandK Labs
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