I have the impression (no data to back it up, though) that no small number of users download bindists (because most OS packages are out of date: Debian Unstable is still on 7.8.4, as is Ubuntu Wily; Arch is on 7.10.1).
On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Ben Gamari <b...@well-typed.com> wrote: > Richard Eisenberg <e...@cis.upenn.edu> writes: > > > I think some of my idea was misunderstood here: my goal was to have > > quick releases only from the stable branch. The goal would not be to > > release the new and shiny, but instead to get bugfixes out to users > > quicker. The new and shiny (master) would remain as it is now. In > > other words: more users would be affected by this change than just the > > vanguard. > > > I see. This is something we could certainly do. > > It would require, however, that we be more pro-active about > continuing to merge things to the stable branch after the release. > Currently the stable branch is essentially in the same state that it was > in for the 7.10.2 release. I've left it this way as it takes time and > care to cherry-pick patches to stable. Thusfar my poilcy has been to > perform this work lazily until it's clear that we will do > another stable release as otherwise the effort may well be wasted. > > So, even if the steps of building, testing, and uploading the release > are streamlined more frequent releases are still far from free. Whether > it's a worthwhile cost I don't know. > > This is a difficult question to answer without knowing more about how > typical users actually acquire GHC. For instance, this effort would > have minimal impact on users who get their compiler through their > distribution's package manager. On the other hand, if most users > download GHC bindists directly from the GHC download page, then perhaps > this would be effort well-spent. > > Cheers, > > - Ben > > _______________________________________________ > ghc-devs mailing list > ghc-devs@haskell.org > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs > >
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