RE: [boost] Re: plans for a bugfix release ?

From: Rozental, Gennadiy (gennadiy.rozental_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-07-15 13:09:58

> David Abrahams wrote:
> > Beman Dawes <bdawes_at_[hidden]> writes:
> >  
> > When we released 1.30.0, despite extensive pre-release testing, it 
> > went out with several prominent showstopper bugs.  Don't you think 
> > we'll make the same mistake for 1.31.0?  Also, AFAICT 1.30.1 can go 
> > out much, much sooner.
> > 
> 
> I agree with Dave here. To me there is another good reason for doing 
> minor releases more frequently. Neither the next major 
> release nor the 
> CVS state is likely to help most of the people who use Boost in their 
> projects.

I agree that we should publish patch releases more frequently. But the
question here what is the criteria whether the release should be considered
patch or next one. In my projects I choose the following strategy: if
release does not affect the interface, so that I could simply substitute one
shared library with patched one - this is patch release. In other case it's
next release. It may be a little different with boost, cause most of the
staff in the headers. But the idea should be IMO similar.

 
> I guess that there are a lot of projects out there that 
> cannot allow for 
> an interface change in one of the core libs every couple of month. So 
> they really need bugfix only releases if showstopper bugs are 
> found in 
> the last release.

We should've publish patch release right after we discovered them. IMO at
this point, with all those iterator adaptor changes I would rather made new
release.

> Just my 2c
> 
> Thomas

Gennadiy.