Re: musl 1.0.x branch

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 06:46:10PM +0000, Oliver Schneider wrote:
> Hi Rich,
> 
> On 2014-06-11 13:16, Rich Felker wrote:
> > For reference (I'm not sure this is published anywhere; it probably
> > should be) "stable" here means "no unnecessary changes that risk
> > disturbing an existing working deployment". It's not a matter of how
> > reliable or bug-free the release is.
> Well that's clear. Since we cannot reliably know how many defects exist
> in a software project.

I don't think it's automatically clear. For many projects with
"stable" series, the "development" series is documented as having
major feature regressions or temporary breakage due to design changes,
partial or full rewrites of components, etc. and is intended only for
people who want to follow the new development and who can live without
whatever features are broken in the mean time (or even, in some cases,
permanently dropped).

With musl, on the other hand, the intent is that releases from master,
and even git master itself, are intended to be at least as good as the
previous release in terms of functionality and bugs. Sometimes this
intent isn't fully met, but it's the intent, and I think it differs
significantly from the stability model of many other projects.

> > My intended audience for stable is users who have fairly constant sets
> > of packages built against musl and who don't want to deal with changes
> > that might affect their build procedures, nonstandard or undocumented
> > behaviors their programs might be relying on, etc. The release series
> > from master (currently 1.1.x) on the other hand is probably a better
> > choice if you're expanding your set of software built against musl,
> > aiming to support a widening range of kernel versions, etc.
> Indeed. Then I should probably switch to the newer release series.
> 
> Perhaps this is worth pointing out? Is there a Wiki in which one can get
> edit rights so as to write these things down for future users?

We really need to get account creation sorted out on the wiki; right
now it's restricted due to spam. Contact Jeremy Huntwork
<jhuntwork@lightcubesolutions.com> if you need access.

Rich