Coming Soon: Stable D Releases!

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, July 26, 2012 08:35:26 Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> > I don't think a rigid release schedule has ever worked in software
> > development. Linus is world-renowned for releasing at what looks like
> > utterly random intervals and I know of very little software that ships
> > on a strict time based cadence. It almost ALWAYS slips for some reason
> > or the other.
> > 
> > I guess my point is that it isn't as easy as making the schedule the
> > final arbiter because it is an attempt to deny that the real world
> > exists. What if Walter is on vacation (I don't know if he believes in
> > vacations but, bear with me) during release week? What then? Do we
> > demand that he organize is life around our precious release schedule?
> 
> You can at least come to an official agreement that we should release on
> a given interval. Then we don't need to stop the world to make that
> happened. Sometimes it will be delayed and that would be acceptable. If
> we do have a release schedule and Walter, for example, knows he will be
> on vacation during the release week. We can plan ahead and annoyance
> that the next release will be delayed or skipped.
> 
> > Also, what about projects that absolutely cannot be completed in under X
> > weeks? Do we just leave the code in the release, half working, waiting
> > to spread all KINDS of bugs?
> 
> No, no, no. That's another problem. Don't commit anything to
> upstream/master that isn't finished. I don't know why Walter does that.
> Does he not have his own fork? Why not create a new branch at least?

There are a number of things that we could do to improve our release process - 
a number of them revolving around taking proper advantage of git (though not 
all) - but actually effecting those kind of changes has been incredibly difficult 
as Don has pointed out. So, while there are a number of things that we _could_ 
do (and probably _should_ do), the fact that Walter has agreed to this scheme 
with dlang-stable is actually _huge_. It may help open the door to other 
changes to the release process (like branching for a beta). AFAIK, Walter 
never branches for _anything_, though maybe he does have branches of some kind 
on his computer.

- Jonathan M Davis