Hey, guys, I just noticed that it is now December and I can’t recall exactly where we left off on the planning for a 4.1 or 4.0.1 release.
I would argue that we should try to get a 4.1 release out in the next month to six weeks. There have been quite a few bug fixes as well as improvements that didn’t quite make it into 4.0. The rate of new bugs reports still seems relatively high, which would argue for waiting a bit until that rate falls off, but I think the nature of 4.0 was such that there are probably still plenty of nooks and crannies of new code that it could take a lot of months before all the bugs get shaken out, so a 4.1 soon would at least eliminate the known and fixed bugs, which is a fairly long list. So, my suggestion would be that we take the next two weeks to get any urgent bugs/changes in and stabilized for 4.1 and hold off on backporting any new work that might seriously risk stability, and then maybe we’ll have something worthy of being release 4.1 for late this month or early next month. As far as 4.1 vs 4.0.1, I would simply argue that the minor dot release would only be needed if we were only talking about some major bugs that desperately need fixing, whereas a major dot release also includes some feature improvements as well and lots of small bugs fixes. In other words, the minor dot would be considered an urgent stopgap measure, and the major dot would be a decent step forward on the overall quality and feature fronts. Ultimately, this may simply come down to the question of whether the benefits in a 4.1 are worth the tireless efforts of the release manager. I would also include in my proposal the suggestion that the next major dot release would be 2-4 months down the road from 4.1, depending of course on what bug fixes and feature improvements accrue. -- Jack Krupansky
