On Sun, 15 Jul 2012 16:26:50 -0700, Walter Bright
<[email protected]> wrote:
On 7/15/2012 2:58 PM, Adam Wilson wrote:
The idea that bugs and new features can and should be rolled into the
same
release runs counter to every accepted best practice in both FOSS and
Commercial
wisdom. The two have VERY different velocities, bugs can be fixed in
days, but
new features take much longer. Consider COFF support for example,
Walter has
been hammering away at it for weeks now, and he isn't even 50% done,
how many
bugs have been fixed and confirmed resolved, in the same timespan?
Weeks is an exaggeration. And still, there have been a steady
accumulation of fixes.
Also,
consider that adding new features makes it significantly harder to
track down
regressions (is a real regression or did the new feature upset the code
in an
unexpected way) and the new features themselves create new bugs. If the
branches
are separate then it becomes trivial to determine if the new feature
caused the
bug, because it will show up in one and not the other.
How DARE we DEMAND that our users wait 4 MONTHS for regression fixes
because we
are afraid of a split or a little extra work? How many users could we
lose if we
significantly slowed down the release cycle (and therefore the bugfix
cycle)
such that people are waiting many months for their fixes? The language
would be
perceived as dead/dying and that would be just as bad as the D1/D2
split. If you
allow your past experiences to paralyze you into inaction, you will
bring about
the very problem you seek to avoid.
Sigh. Half say we release too often, the other half not often enough.
This would solve both complaints overnight. The half that say "not often
enough" have critical bugfixes they are waiting on, the "too often" camp
has new things that they want now (ex. COFF) and see all this bugfixing as
getting in the way. I agree its a problem, but this makes both happy. The
new feature camp can use dev and put up with the breakages (what we do
now), and bugfix camp can get back to work.
--
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/
