Suggestion about releases

bachmeier no at spam.net
Wed Nov 3 19:49:36 UTC 2021


On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 16:09:27 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 15:35:51 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 09:13:59 UTC, Imperatorn 
>> wrote:
>>> I don't have time to write a proper post, but I have a 
>>> suggestion.
>>>
>>> Could we increase the time between releases?
>>>
>>> Today we have in practice 15 days between minor versions. 
>>> That might be ok, but "major" releases are too frequent.
>>>
>>> The logic behind that is it would hopefully put more focus on 
>>> testing and reliability etc. If we have to live with a 
>>> release for a longer time period, the theory is everyone will 
>>> be more cautious when making a change.
>>>
>>> Theory vs practice applies ofc, but I think it could be 
>>> positive. As for what amount of time makes most sense, I'm 
>>> not sure yet.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>
>> My preference is once a year, after dconf, they release a new 
>> stable version of the compiler. That wouldn't prevent them 
>> from having other releases in between, they just wouldn't be 
>> "stable" releases. I don't think this will go anywhere though. 
>> It's been discussed before and most people don't see a need to 
>> change it.
>
> Yeah, there's no such thing as a new idea. I just wasn't around 
> when those discussions where had 😎
>
> I think we have pretty good tests for our code, so I'm not so 
> scared there. It's more what you could maybe call 
> "architectural hygiene", how you plan for changes, what to do 
> when requirement x comes up, should we use strict semver etc.

The two main advantages from my perspective:

- It's easy to follow and plan for changes if the release is once 
a year. I am not an insider, so it is difficult to keep track of 
everything. I usually learn about changes because I installed a 
new version of the compiler and I'm getting warnings or error 
messages.
- You can add a preview flag for a potential feature to the 
frequent releases but never add it to the stable release if it 
doesn't show its worth.

A good example of how this hurts from a marketing perspective: 
most non-users are unlikely to ever hear of importC. It showed up 
in a random release alongside bug fixes. If you had a single 
presentation each year showing off all the things coming in the 
next "release" you could generate some buzz.



More information about the Digitalmars-d mailing list