Re: GOP2-2b - Stable 2.16.x releases (dictator) (probable decision)

[John Mandereau]

Il giorno mer, 01/08/2012 alle 15.21 +0200, David Kastrup ha scritto:
> Graham Percival <address@hidden> writes:
> > On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 02:37:58PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> >> If it is non-operative, it should be either made operative or removed.
> >> There is no point dragging it along as purely dead weight we should not
> >> be using.
> >
> > Sure, patches appreciated.
> 
> You know that this comes across as "In my opinion nobody but the foolish
> person asking for this should think of working on that problem."?  I am
> staking out the requirements I need to get the appointed job done.
> Unless you have some reasonable suggestions how to get around those
> requirements, I see little point in discouraging others from helping
> with them.

+1

I'm sometimes slow to react (up to one week for making a patch), but I'm
willing to help with version number management in the build system if
this definitely appears to be the route to go with.  On the minus side,
I've been too lazy so far to get GUB to build on my main computer, but
this laziness is not unrecoverable :-)


> > I'm missing something.  What's wrong with this scenario:
> > - I release 2.15.42 today or tomorrow.
> > - you branch stable/2.16 from that.
> > - in a week I release 2.17.0.
> > - you do whatever you want with 2.15.43, 2.15.44, etc, until you
> >   reach 2.16.0.  Other than probably having no syntax changes
> >   because I really don't know how that can be juggled.
> 
> There will be no syntax changes in the 2.16 branch, at least not of the
> convert-ly kind (one reasonably established syntax to a different
> intended one).

In Graham's scenario above, syntax changes could be handled by applying
them to both stable/2.16 and master, as long as the convert-ly rules can
be inserted in 2.17 series between syntax changes in 2.15.42 and those
present only in 2.17 series.


> >> 2.15.95 would presumably protest against snippets already being at
> >> 2.16.0.
> >
> > The final change of version numbers it the last thing we've done
> > in the past, and just tested on my local machine with make doc.
> 
> Hm.  At any rate, it seems strange to have 2.17.0 released and no
> recognizable disruption in the 2.15 release series while 2.16 is not
> finished.

It seems strange indeed, but explaining/referencing this in the News and
Changes and CG (and maybe Usage), and contacting packagers to tell 2.15
releases are RCs to be included in alpha releases of distributions could
solve strange feelings on this version numbers playing while saving us
from messing up with the build system (including website making) and
GUB.

Best,
John