Re: [boost] Should we provide hot fixes?

From: dherring_at_[hidden]
Date: 2008-08-18 18:31:51

On Mon, 18 Aug 2008, Beman Dawes wrote:

> Although it does look like we will be able to hold to a quarterly
> release schedule, it is really doubtful we have enough resources to
> issue point releases.
>
> To get bug fixes into user's hands more quickly, should we provide hot
> fixes when appropriate?

Yes and no.  Yes -- trivial bloopers shouldn't require a 3-month 
turnaround.

>     -- Click on "Download in other formats: Unified Diff".
>     -- From the command prompt,
>             cd directory-location
>             patch <download-location/changeset_r48192.diff

No -- this is too complex.  For any reasonably large project, instructions 
beyond "install version 1.36" are generally ignored.  I've already had the 
fun of helping distribute in-house tarballs for boost, setting up my own 
tests, server, etc. so people wouldn't have to slurp 1.35+ from SVN.

Much better would be if these "hotfixes" could be applied to the release 
(and trunk) branches, tested against the usual mechanisms, and released as 
a micro version number.  Then everyone gets the update from the main boost 
servers.

Of course this puts more work on the release manager's shoulders, so your 
opinion may differ.  But these hotfixes should truly be trivial; thus 
testing should be easy, and it gives you more opportunities to test the 
release system. :)  For anything nontrivial, I'd point people to the 
appropriate SVN branch.  And nontrivial things generally motivate 
end-users to jump greater hurdles or just wait a few months.

Another possibility would be to distribute a boost-hotfix.sh script along 
with boost releases.  If it contained a hard-coded path to boost.org, then 
users could run boost-hotfix which would automatically download and apply 
any patches which had been uploaded properly.

This script would look something like

wget boost.org/1.36/hotfixes
for fix in hotfixes
do
         # only apply new fixes
         if test ! -f applied/$fix
         then
                 wget $fix || exit 1
                 patch -p0 < $fix || exit 1
                 touch applied/$fix
         fi
done

- Daniel