Start of dmd 2.064 beta program

[Johannes Pfau]

Am Fri, 18 Oct 2013 11:45:27 -0700
schrieb Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org>:
 
> > - We do not have any defined release timeline. When is it time to
> > start prepping for a release? It's up to Walter's arbitrary decision
> > for when this happens, he doesn't even talk to the community or
> > contributors on whether it's a good time for a beta phase (maybe
> > there's a huge or disruptive new pull request that's planning to be
> > merged and a beta should be delayed).
> 
> I understand how that can be a bother. Walter figures the time is
> ripe for a new release when we have enough compelling features and
> fixes. I'll try to make the appropriate announcements in the future
> prior to deciding on starting a beta.
> 

Why is everyone here so obsessed with feature based releases? Quoting
Iain's post from 30.8:
> It has been about 3 months since the last release of the D 
> front-end implementation.  Three years experience and carrying 
> out over 100 merges into GDC tells me that each time the 
> development cycle starts edging towards it's fourth month, it 
> makes things an absolute nightmare, in both the time consumed 
> merging in the changes, and with time spent tracking down bug 
> reports for unittests/testsuite cases that test backend code 
> generation - with 2.060, 2.061 and 2.063 being the worst releases 
> I have ever had to deal with - before 2.060 the release schedule 
> (if it even qualifies as a 'schedule') was anywhere between 1-2 
> months.

Even a rough schedule (We try to release a new frontend version every 2
months) would help. Would it have been the end of the world if we just
released 2.064 two months ago and 2.065 now?

But what's worse: If we keep making feature based releases then the
criteria for release should be documented by those making the decision.
It's as simple as writing two sentences on a wiki page.
Right now I don't have any clue why the 'time is ripe' now and not 2
months ago, or one month ago, or in two weeks... It seems like Walter
is just flipping a coin every month (I don't say it is like that -
but it looks like that because there's no information on the release
criteria)

And btw: 5 months between releases is just way too long for users as
well. Although the features Walter envisioned for 2.064 may not have
been ready 2 months ago we could have shipped many bug fixes two months
earlier.