Re: It is time for a feature freeze (it is NOW or never).

[Kenichi Handa]

In article <address@hidden>, address@hidden (Kim F. Storm) writes:
> I suggest that we make a complete feature freeze on HEAD for 21.4 NOW !!!

I have thought that we are going to take the following
schedule.

(1) Release the current RC branch as 21.4.
(2) Feature freeze on HEAD.
(3) Merge HEAD into RC branch, and make it 21.4.50.
(4) Merge Unicode branch into HEAD, and make it 22.0.0.
(5) Start pretest of 21.5 based on RC.
(6) Release RC branch as 21.5.
...
(7) Feature freeze on HEAD (i.e. Unicode version)
(8) Merge HEAD into RC branch, and make it 22.0.50.

Do you intend to skip (1)?  Perhaps, that will be better
because we can avoid disappointing users who exepect new
features in the release of this long delay.

> If we don't do it now, and start merging unicode and bidi to HEAD, I
> fear that a 22.1 release is at least 1 year further into the future --
> and that CVS HEAD will go through a phase of lesser stable code than
> we have been used to for quite some time (I'm not judging the quality
> of the code on those branches, it's just that it hasn't been tested to
> the same extent as HEAD, so we should expect problems).

I agree.  But, I think bug-fixing work for 21.5 (or 21.4)
must be done on RC branch so that (4) can be done promptly
and we can have more users of Unicode version, which boosts
the release of 22.1.

---
Ken'ichi HANDA
address@hidden