Coming Soon: Stable D Releases!

[Adam Wilson]

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 11:12:38 -0700, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> On 16 July 2012 18:56, Adam Wilson <flyboynw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 10:26:31 -0700, Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at ubuntu.com>  
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Monday, 16 July 2012 at 16:39:45 UTC, Marco Leise wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Am Mon, 16 Jul 2012 17:21:39 +0100
>>>> schrieb Iain Buclaw <ibuclaw at ubuntu.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> On 16 July 2012 14:00, Marco Leise <Marco.Leise at gmx.de> wrote:
>>>>> > Am Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:51:16 -0700
>>>>> > schrieb "Adam Wilson" <flyboynw at gmail.com>:
>>>>> >
>>>>> > As it shows, the beta phase doesn't always catch all > regressions  
>>>>> in
>>>>> > people's code, so I encourage you to do this > project and  
>>>>> eventually it
>>>>> > will be used by GDC and other > major from-source projects. By the  
>>>>> way:
>>>>> > Should this also > later become the base for the official zip file  
>>>>> download?
>>>>> > > IIRC Walter wanted to keep track of the DMD downloads from > the  
>>>>> main web
>>>>> > site (no redistribution) and hotfixed versions > of D could become
>>>>> > increasingly popular.
>>>>> >
>>>>> > --
>>>>> > Marco
>>>>> >
>>>>>  And what benefits would GDC get from opting to use this rather than
>>>>> the normal releases?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What he said, [regression] fixes that didn't make it into the initial
>>>> release. I don't know about GDC's 'patch level', but for 2.059 I  
>>>> applied
>>>> patches for the following issues after release, to have it feel as  
>>>> solid as
>>>> good old 2.058:
>>>> - issue-7907
>>>> - issue-7911
>>>> - issue-7922
>>>> - outOfMemoryError-undeprecation
>>>> - std-path-sep-deprecation
>>>>
>>>> In case crypto algorithms become part of Phobos, some patches may  
>>>> improve
>>>> security as well. Didn't you say you work only with the GitHub  
>>>> release tags
>>>> for stability?
>>>
>>>
>>> So if I were to represent a theoretical merge sequence in ascii:
>>>
>>>             ... former releases ...
>>>     DMD Development             GDC Development
>>>          >---- DMD 2.060 release ---->
>>>          |                           |
>>>      DMD Development         DMD 2.060.1 release
>>>          v                           v
>>>          |                           |
>>>          |                   DMD 2.060.2 release
>>>          |                           v
>>>          |                           |
>>>          |                   DMD 2.060.3 release
>>>          |                           v
>>>          |                           |
>>>      DMD 2.061 beta          DMD 2.060.4 release
>>>          v                           v
>>>          |                           |
>>>      DMD 2.061 RC            DMD 2.060.5 release
>>>          v                           v
>>>          |                           |
>>>          >-- DMD 2.061 release ------>
>>>
>>>
>>> Would this be a correct way of utilising this new process?
>>>
>>
>> I'd say mostly correct. The last step is the one where we might differ
>> though, as we may choose to wait on regression and other bug-fixes to  
>> any
>> new features in that release. But we might not wait if the build  
>> consists of
>> no new features, just breaking changes to existing ones. It will be  
>> more of
>> a conversation with the community about how stable they feel the  
>> changes in
>> the latest release are. For example, of the new COFF support is still  
>> highly
>> unstable (lots of fix commits), we might wait until that settles down  
>> before
>> merging in the entirety of the development repos.
>>
>
> And how does DMD backend support for COFF affect GDC? :-)
>

Very little I imagine. But we are working against DMD. Since you only want  
the front-end fixes, I imagine that (at least in terms of the backend) you  
won't care much when we merge that feature. My point was more general to  
versioning, in that we might update the stable branches to the new release  
day one. The new fixes will still appear though. Obviously this would have  
more impact for you with any new front-end features.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/