Dan Sully wrote:
I agree completely Phil - we're focused right now on making 6.0 stable. There
was a big jump in functionality, speed and stability in changing out the
entire backend between 5.4 and 6.0. However, as you well know, bugs are
introduced along the way.
I think this is exactly where the problem is. I shouldn't be forced to choose between an old version with lots of bugs, and a new, bleeding-edge version that fixes (most of) the older bugs, but also introduces many new bugs associated with lots of new features that are largely useless to me.
There really should be two, separately maintained code bases: a "stable" version where stability and robustness are paramount, and an experimental version with the latest new features that may not be particularly stable.
This *doesn't* mean that you never update the "stable" version. You update it as often as you have to to fix a bug or security hole. Even daily, if you have to. But new features, even seemingly simple ones, are *prohibited*. Those go only into the experimental tree.
I think the Debian Linux project does it exactly right. Debian has three flavors: "stable", which is regularly updated *only* with security fixes; "unstable", with all the latest, bleeding edge features; and "testing", which is something like stable, but periodically updated with features that have proven themselves for a while in the "unstable" version. Once in a while, you rev the "stable" version, including only those new features that have already withstood the test of time. It works pretty well for me.
Phil _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
