> On 4 Apr 2021, at 01:15, Miro Hrončok <mhron...@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> However, I need to ask: Would this also happen if there was a rc version of
> 3.9.3?
Good question. The RC would not help. Most importantly, 3.9.3 was itself an
expedited release due to its security content. When I did use an RC phase for
3.9.2, which also contained security fixes, it met with considerable backlash
and urges to release the update faster. And I ultimately did, two days after
the RC was out. Informed by this experience, I would have likely skipped the RC
for 3.9.3 anyway.
More generally, RCs historically provided little value. Since Python 3.4 we've
provided 55 bugfix releases. Five of those included an RC2, suggesting testing
caught a regression. Let's look closer:
- none of those happened for 3.8 and 3.9 releases;
- two of those are a single issue in 3.7.1rc1 and 3.6.7rc1:
https://bugs.python.org/issue34927 <https://bugs.python.org/issue34927>, indeed
caught by a user downloading an rc1 installer from python.org
<http://python.org/>;
- one was found by a third-party during "preparation for Python 3.8" and it
just happened to be a regression also present in 3.7.4rc1
(https://bugs.python.org/issue24214 <https://bugs.python.org/issue24214>);
- one was found by a third-party using nightly Python builds in CI
(https://bugs.python.org/issue38216 <https://bugs.python.org/issue38216>) and
it just happened to be a regression also present in 3.5.8rc1;
- one was found by a core developer running regression tests on what
coincidentally happened to be 3.6.2rc1 on Windows
(https://bugs.python.org/issue30716 <https://bugs.python.org/issue30716>). The
bug was in the tests themselves.
So, we're looking at a single instance of a bug found an RC1 installer being
out there. Python 3.0 through 3.3 had limited user penetration so looking at
those isn't informative. But we can look at Python 2.7, and that one had a
single rc2 in its 10 years of bugfix releases. That was 2.7.3rc2, in 2012. It
was in the Windows help file, discovered by a core developer looking through it.
In the time of 3.8 and 3.9 so far, there was a single hotfix release which was
due to a regression not caught by a published release candidate
(https://bugs.python.org/issue41304 <https://bugs.python.org/issue41304>).
Given the information above, I stand by my decision (confirmed with other
release managers) to skip RCs for bugfix releases.
- Ł
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