State of the release process

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Monday, 12 January 2026 at 13:49:18 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> Am 12.01.26 um 13:19 schrieb Mike Parker:
>> On Monday, 12 January 2026 at 08:59:46 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>> 
>>>
>>> So, the question is, are there plans to work towards getting 
>>> back to the pre-2.110.0 release standards, or is this just 
>>> the mode of operation to be expected?
>> 
>> Dennis can say more, but see here for starters:
>> 
>> https://forum.dlang.org/post/ckfscuzcbkqfqxrdaicg@forum.dlang.org
>
> Thanks Mike, I've read this back then. So that means this 
> proposal has been accepted and, barring personal reasons, 
> should take effect starting with 1.120.0?
>
> IMO, a beta release is still very desirable in order to catch 
> regressions or build related issues* early, even if there are 
> not that many testers.
>
> * 
> https://github.com/dlang/dmd/issues/21126#issuecomment-3732111601

FWIW, the macos 15 problem will be resolved soon, and I think 
this is a combination of a lot of changes that are difficult to 
deal with:

1. Sudden change of release manager
2. Very manual process for releases (along with some personal 
infrastructure)
3. Macos test runners can't be upgraded to Macos15 due to 
unrelated issues. This means the auto testing would not catch any 
related segfaults.
4. No native DMD for ARM Mac means tests have to be run on a very 
limited release of systems (only one release supports MacOS15 on 
intel hardware), or run using Rosetta. All GH MacOS runners are 
now ARM.
5. Migration of bug list to github means manual production of 
changelog

I think we are probably going to get back to a more regular 
cadence. I can't speak for Dennis, but I trust he is going to be 
able to solve these issues. I think we will get to a place where 
a release is a button push on github.

The Mac issue has been a huge problem, and I wish we could have 
had a release sooner. I think this has been a perfect storm of 
circumstances to prevent that. I personally have not used DMD for 
years due to quirks in using the compiler via Rosetta that caused 
hard-to-track linker errors. I have at least one user of my 
libraries that has complained about issues related specifically 
to intel MAC running MacOS15. I cannot help him solve this 
without appropriate hardware. I'm hoping 2.112.1 (with the fix 
for the segfault) will help shed some light on the issue.

-Steve