Ordering of milestones within a series seems random

They are ordered by name. The name of series and milestones (and the version of a release) are sorted using the sorted-dotted-number rules use by debian.

The reason we do not use date is that not every milestone has a date expected, many are not timeboxed. Since the milestone name is the release version, and releases are numbered in sequences, we use the milestone name to sort.

Actually they weren't ordered by name either. Before I got a couple deleted for me, the arrangement was something like:

rc3, rc2, 1.0rc1, rc1, 1.0rc6, rc5, rc4

What page was this ordering on? In a table? In the timeline?

In the graphical timeline on the front page.

Edwin. Can you look into this. What is the nature of the problem and what is the effort need to fix. Marting is think about doing another round of timeline changes before 3.0 and we may want to try to fix this.

The weird ordering was probably due to some of the milestones having expected dates and some not. If the date isn't set, it is treated as if it is far in the future; therefore, the ones with dates will be on the left, and the ones without dates will be sorted by name on the right.

I see that the daisyextension project's milestones are sorted correctly, and I assume there was just confusion about how a milestone is sorted when no date is set, so I am closing this bug.

Name ordering isn't always useful. Should I open a new ticket for the possibility of being able to order milestones without having to make up completion dates for them, or will this ticket suffice?

For instance, in Eclipse, I know I had to get RCP working before I could get the platform to work, and I have to get the platform to work before I can get JDT to work.

Rockwalrus, please open up a new bug for your specific needs regarding milestone ordering.