From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: ludovic.courtes@laas.fr (Ludovic =?iso-8859-1?Q?Court=E8s?=) Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: Stable releases Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:37:01 +0100 Organization: LAAS-CNRS Message-ID: <87y7q3zjpe.fsf@laas.fr> References: <87bqn5n48n.fsf@ossau.uklinux.net> <8764dai81b.fsf@laas.fr> <871wnyf25z.fsf@raven.defaultvalue.org> <87mz6kea8c.fsf@ossau.uklinux.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: main.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1164203294 1153 80.91.229.2 (22 Nov 2006 13:48:14 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2006 13:48:14 +0000 (UTC) Cc: Guile Development , Rob Browning Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Wed Nov 22 14:48:11 2006 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GmsS4-00006M-U1 for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:47:51 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GmsS4-00034a-Dt for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:47:48 -0500 Original-Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1GmsIA-0004PS-AF for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:37:34 -0500 Original-Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1GmsI8-0004Nb-DD for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:37:33 -0500 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1GmsI7-0004Mx-El for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:37:31 -0500 Original-Received: from [140.93.0.15] (helo=laas.laas.fr) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS-1.0:DHE_RSA_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA:24) (Exim 4.52) id 1GmsI7-0006LE-46 for guile-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 08:37:31 -0500 Original-Received: from messiaen.laas.fr (messiaen [IPv6:2001:660:6602:0:230:65ff:fed4:9d20]) by laas.laas.fr (8.13.8/8.13.8) with SMTP id kAMDbKSq009400; Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:37:22 +0100 (MET) Original-Received: by messiaen.laas.fr (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Wed, 22 Nov 2006 14:37:01 +0100 Original-To: Neil Jerram X-URL: http://www.laas.fr/~lcourtes/ X-Revolutionary-Date: 2 Frimaire an 215 de la =?iso-8859-1?Q?R=E9volution?= X-PGP-Key-ID: 0xEB1F5364 X-PGP-Key: http://www.laas.fr/~lcourtes/ludovic.asc X-PGP-Fingerprint: 821D 815D 902A 7EAB 5CEE D120 7FBA 3D4F EB1F 5364 X-OS: powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu Mail-Followup-To: Neil Jerram , Rob Browning , Guile Development In-Reply-To: <87mz6kea8c.fsf@ossau.uklinux.net> (Neil Jerram's message of "Tue, 21 Nov 2006 21:54:59 +0000") User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/21.4 (gnu/linux) X-Spam-Score: -0.001 () NO_RELAYS X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang at CNRS-LAAS on IPv6:2001:660:6602::2 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:6237 Archived-At: Hi, Neil Jerram writes: > I think we probably have taken a wrong turn, because I don't think the > 1.8.x that we are on the verge of producing can be described any more > as a "stable" series. Surely the common connotations of "stable" are > that the API is as unchanging as possible, and that the code is only > changed in order to fix non-trivial bugs? > > And on the other hand, if 1.8.x isn't a "stable" series, how does it > differ usefully from HEAD? My viewpoint, based on the observation of the current and past release process, was that HEAD should contain "revolutionary" changes like, e.g., switching to GMP, providing a replacement to the GH API, and eventually things like integrating Unicode support, integrating R6RS library support, changing GCs (?), etc. Conversely, the "stable" branch would not change such major components. OTOH, since it may take a while before the unstable branch is usable, I was happy with the integration of "minor" functionalities such as text collation into the "stable" series. But... > Therefore, my feeling now is that we should revert to traditional > "stable" handling for 1.8.x. This would mean not merging enhancements > from HEAD such as my debugging stuff and Ludovic's text collation > work. It would also mean that Rob's comments about limited testing > requirement hold. Adding new C code (as is the case with the text collation bug) might indeed break builds on some platforms. If this is the case, then it may be the case that the series can hardly be regarded as "stable". Adding new Scheme modules, however, is unlikely to break builds. To summarize: I think we could well have an "in-between" policy, that is, allowing a little more than just bug fixes in the "stable" branch. This would require careful evaluation of the problems/breakages that could be caused by each individual new functionality, and this would make the release process slightly heavier since more testing would be required. I believe many other large software projects (e.g., the Linux kernel) have a similar policy. BTW, I haven't (yet?) merged `(ice-9 i18n)' into 1.8. > We certainly need at least one familiar person, but I'm sure it would > be even better to have more than one. Yeah, documenting and automating all this would be very helpful. Thanks, Ludovic. _______________________________________________ Guile-devel mailing list Guile-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/guile-devel