Re: [bug-gawk] Fedora Rawhide - testing stable branch?

[arnold]

Hi David,

> I have gawk-4.1.4 rebase ready for Fedora Rawhide (F26 in the future).

Great!  Thanks!

> And I saw that after the release of gawk-4.1.4 you have added some other
> commits into gawk-4.1-stable branch. Some of those commits looks like they
> could (maybe) increase performance a little, or could use some additional
> testing, etc.

I think you're a bit confused. The commits in gawk-4.1-stable are only
related to licensing, as you raised initially.  Perhaps you looked at master
by mistake?  Try

        cd gawk                 # git repo
        git pull
        git checkout gawk-4.1-stable
        git pull                # just in case
        git diff gawk-4.1.4     # compare to tag

I have a few minor documentation tweaks to make in gawk-4.1-stable so that
I can then upload the doc to GNU Central. I hope that will happen in the next
few days.

After that, I want to leave gawk-4.1-stable alone and focus on development
in master, which I hope will become 4.2.

Once I make a 4.2 release, I'll create a gawk-4.2-stable branch for bug
fixes.  (Lather, rinse, repeat. :-)

> So I was thinking about adding those patches to gawk in Fedora Rawhide.
> Reasons for it:
>  * Fedora Rawhide could help with testing of new features, builds, etc.,
> which is de facto one of the reasons why we have her :)
>  * your new commits could be tested more/sooner before getting into
> official stable tarball
>  * I could write you approximately 1-2 weeks before every Alpha & Beta
> Freeze of new Fedora release, if you deem the commits tested enough to
> release new source tarball
>  * if you would release new tarball prior to Alpha/Beta Freeze, that
> release of Fedora could be using the latest stable version of gawk available

This sounds nice, but I'm not sure it would work in practice, assuming that
you mean to track master in favor of gawk-4.1-stable.

In particular, the dfa code is a constantly moving target, and also our
team has some serious work to continue doing with respect to typing and
also a pending new feature or two.

In short, master is likely to not be stable enough for the next year to year
and a half that I'd want it as part of a distribution.

> In any way, once the Alpha Freeze, I would like make gawk stable as
> possible no matter the previous course of action (it's tagged as Critical
> Path package in Fedora), so the newly added commits would be added to
> Rawhide again.

I understand that.  That's why I have both master and xxx-stable branches. :-)

I do announce test releases in the gnu-announce list and on comp.lang.awk.
Or we can talk (off list) about adding you to the developer's list so that
you can more closely follow what's happening, but we should talk before
you decide that's what you want to do.

> But, I would like to hear your opinion first... Would you be interested in
> some kind of co-operation like this?

In general, very interested.  But we have to figure out the best way
for this to work for both of us.

> And do you deem the commits in
> gawk-4.1-stable branch good enough to be tested like this in Fedora
> Rawhide? I would like to avoid any system breakages in Rawhide... :)

gawk-4.1-stable yes, master no.

Thanks!

Arnold