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/[email protected]
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
