Based on the experience in TT #388, I think we need to add "test Parrot against selected HLLs" as a critical step prior to making _any_ major release, including 1.0. Here's the background...
Commit r37061 made a change that eliminated some PMC_str_val items in src/packout.c; this change had the effect of breaking the rakudo build. (IMCC broke, not Rakudo.) Most of the Rakudo developers and users are moving away from building or testing against Parrot HEAD -- we now keep an internal pointer as to the version of Parrot that we build against (which may lag some distance behind HEAD). Indeed, my understanding of the HLL development process is that HLL developers are generally expected to be working against the monthly releases, not Parrot HEAD. The only reason I caught the build breakage in this case was because I asked myself "Gee, I wonder if we still compile against Parrot HEAD". While I think it's very probable that someone would have noticed this problem between now and March 17, had the commit occurred closer to the release date it's very possible that it would have gone unnoticed. Had that occurred, we would've been left with the situation that Parrot 1.0 -- the one that we declare "stable" for multiple months -- would've contained a bug that completely prevents Rakudo from building. I suggest that we add a "critical" ticket for each of the major releases whereby we verify that the major HLLs can still be built against the code being considered for the release, or at least that we can positively identify that any problems are in the HLL code and not something that requires a Parrot internals fix (as was needed for r37061). Pm _______________________________________________ http://lists.parrot.org/mailman/listinfo/parrot-dev
