Re: Releases

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>]

Kai.Grossjohann@CS.Uni-Dortmund.DE (Kai Großjohann) writes:

> Create a patch of the differences between 5.8.7 and 5.9 and delete
> from this patch everything which deletes features, such as the s/mime
> stuff and so on.  Then, apply this patch to 5.8.7, giving 5.8.8.
> 
> What do you think about this?

Oy vey.  Sounds like work.   :-)

> Another thought is: right now, it seems that people haven't really
> added features to ognus like crazy.  So maybe the current ognus looks
> more like a bugfix release of 5.8?  So one idea would be to rechristen
> ognus as 5.8 and release that as 5.8.8.  But that would mean a lot of
> fiddling with the release/branch structure.  Hm.

Well, there's lots of GPG (and stuff) in ognus now, which probably
counts as new features...  

> Yet ANOTHER thought: release 5.8.7 again, only this time with
> mail-source-delete-incoming set to the right value :-)

That's definitely an idea.  :-)

> Are there serious bugs in 5.8.7?  I vaguely remember that I have
> told people to fetch a 5.8.8 snapshot quite a number of times, but I
> don't remember the details.  Gack.  I wish I did.  But there must
> have been a reason for me to do so.  Hm.

There were lotsa problems with 5.8.6, but (so far in my reading of
gnu.emacs.gnus), there doesn't seem to be any major problems with
5.8.7 (except `mail-source-delete-incoming').

> > And there was some talk about not doing any alpha releases any more,
> > but just keep that in cvs...
> 
> Hm.  That's an idea.  Hm.  I think it would be nice to keep the
> snapshots, though.  Maybe there are people out there for whom CVS is a
> real hassle but who would still like access to the development
> sources.  Maybe if you keep a week's worth of daily snapshots?

One reason for not doing alpha releases is that (as we saw during
Pterodactyl), more people used the alpha releases than probably should 
have.  I mean, they're supposed to be very unstable.

One reason for doing alpha releases is that it's very nice to have
names for development.  One can easily say "This problem cropped up
when I upgraded from ognus-0.45 for ognus-0.49", while it's a bit more 
difficult saying "I had a cvs version, and then I did "cvs up" a
couple of days ago, and this problem cropped up"...

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   larsi@gnus.org * Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen