[darcs-devel] next stable release?

[Mark Stosberg]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 12:17:23PM +0200, Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Apr 11, 2005 at 03:35:55AM +0000, Mark Stosberg wrote:
> > Especially with the potential for darcs to be a contender for the Linux
> > kernerl project, it makes sense to me to priority a stable release soon, 
> > so that evaluators can have the latest and greatest. 
> >
> > It also seems there are a number of bug fixes, enhancements and
> > performance improvements in the queue that existing users will
> > appreciate as well. 
> 
> I am working on this. I plan to tag 1.0.3RC1 really soon, probably in a
> couple of days.

Great. Thanks!

> In fact we could have a RC today, but I thought I would
> try to pull some more interesting changes to stable, like Josef's 'darcs
> put', Tommy's new colorisation patches, Benedikt's faster diff and many
> new optimisations. These patches will probably get into 1.0.3 anyway,
> and getting them into RC1 will give them more testing.

After trying 'put' myself, I would like to see it receive more testing
before it moves into the stable branch. At least, I haven't heard any
other feedback on it besides my own. 

I'm wondering if as darcs grows, we don't need to complicate the release
process a little more.  :)

'put' needs to be tested more, and that's not happening much now in the
'unstable' branch from what I can tell. While considering ready for
stable testing may be premature in my opinion, it will certainly result
in some valuable testing. 

I'm wondering it also makes sense occasionally tag the unstable branch
for concerted rounds of 'alpha testing', in addition to the stable 'RC'
process we have now.

I'll also wonder aloud if it would better to declare the next tag of
stable to be a "beta" release rather than a release candidate. I think
the term "release candidate" implies that people should feel nearly as
good about using the release as full stable release. However, at this
point I think there are a lot of changes that have not been widely
tested. 

I appreciate the efforts of those doing the "release engineering" and I
hope my comments are helpful.

    Mark