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  • From: Sebastien FLAESCH <sf AT 4js.com>
  • To: FreeTDS Development Group <freetds AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [freetds] Need for 0.83 as stable version
  • Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:47:24 +0200

Hi,

In our case (we sell a development language), we must distinguish users
in development stage and users production stage. People starting to use
FreeTDS with our runtime system will first develop and test their apps,
and this can take a couple of weeks. Still they would be more confident
to use a "stable" 0.83, even in development.

But even in production, customers want a working solution, if they face
problems with 0.82 that are fixed in 0.83, some will anyway use 0.83, if
FreeTDS is the only choice they have...

I believe what I am suggesting here is to keep 0.83 as stable as possible,
and not make major (risky) changes in this version, and if possible provide
what so called "Maintenance Releases", from time to time, fixing blocking
bugs...

As long as and commit comes with a regression test, and if that commit
does not break existing tests, I would release more often...

I guess it will always be possible to get older stable versions, right?
I mean, if people are not happy with 0.83, they could still use 0.82.
Look: People are still using 0.63 ... right?

Cheers,
Seb

Frediano Ziglio wrote:
Frediano said:

The problem is that usually we release too stable releases :)
I disagree. I know, "release early and often" is the mantra, and surely
Linus knows more than I do about building a community and engendering
excitement amongst developers. That said, a database communications
library is not something many people look forward to upgrading. It's a
critical piece of infrastructure, linked to by still more critical pieces.
Upgrading may involve rebuilding Perl, sqsh, PHP, any number of C or C++
programs, and no small amount of testing.

Consider how many ML messaages refer to 0,64 even today, code that was
superseded 18 months ago! If we'd had 6 releases instead of 1 in the
meantime, that would only lead to more confusion and segmentation in the
user community.


Yes, mainly I prefer the "release early and often" but I understand the point.
However I think nobody can expect a stable release to be "monolithic"
and unchangable. Every software have problems and bugs so it needs
minor and maintenance release. We keep post release patches but it
seems that these patch releases are not accepted as the stable one. I
would personally suggest to keep stable for 1/2 years but I would add
subreleases.

freddy77
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