Is D releasing too often?

[Mike Franklin]

On Monday, 14 May 2018 at 07:20:48 UTC, Joakim wrote:

> There are obviously pros and cons to each pace, and this has 
> been debated internally before, with one of the ldc devs again 
> posting to the Internals mailing list today questioning the 
> current speed.

The post is here: 
https://forum.dlang.org/post/ingkexhebiaqdzknicvr@forum.dlang.org

My interpretation of that post is it's not the frequency of 
releases that's the problem, but rather that bug fixes and 
language changes are mixed together in each release.  If it's 
really a problem, one potential solution could be to keep bug fix 
releases every 2 months, but only release language changes every 
4 or 6 months.  But that's not cost-free either, as it will put 
more of a burden on compiler developers and release managers to 
maintain parallel branches and deal with the inevitable hassle 
and controversy involved in deciding which PR goes in which 
branch, as sometimes bug fixes and language changes are the same 
thing.  Reviewing PRs requires quite a bit of subjective 
judgement and conflicting opinions, and it's best to not add more 
aggravation to an already aggravating process.

> I thought I'd open it up to the community: now that you've 
> experienced this faster pace, as a user of the D compilers, how 
> do you like it? Would you prefer a slower release schedule, say 
> 3-4 major releases a year?

I think the pace is just about right, though I could even 
tolerate even more frequent releases.  Less frequent releases 
would actually be a somewhat irritating to me.  For example, I 
have a language change in 2.081 that I really need in LDC today, 
but it looks like I'm going to have to wait at least 4 months to 
get it.

IMO, the current schedule is working out quite well.

Mike