> I'm quite prepared for someone to make a really good argument that convinces > me > otherwise, but for now, I don't think this is how our releases should work.
I definitely agree with your sentiment that we shouldn't just be pushing untested features into releases and letting the user community deal with any bugs that turn up, but I don't think that letting a patch "simmer" is the right answer either. If you're want to only include mature patches into a release, then we should settle on a way to measure maturity. The easiest method I can think of is making sure that features are well tested before included into a release. I'd say that in general we're not too bad on the testing front. There are a couple places that we need to work on, and hopefully when the build bot instance comes up I'll be able to start adding more tools to help us keep track of our code base. That said, the specific Windows patch mostly affects the build system and introduces a bit of Windows specific code. Once that patch lands I reckon its going to be pretty obvious whether something broke or not. And if we introduce a non-obvious bug the fastest way I can think of triggering it would be to make a release. So basically, "Release Early, Release Often" [1]. HTH, Paul Davis [1] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s04.html
