Well...

The first rule of release management is not to have the same version number on 
different releases.

I see three possibilities

(1) Tell users to use 4.0.1-patched if they need tcltk on Windows
(2) A "vendor patch release": Windows maintainer reissues the binary after 
applying the critical patch. 
(3) 4.0.2 As soon as possible (realistically June 22nd-ish)

Now, (1) requires no intervention, but it has the problem that we are 
approaching the time for campus-wide installations (insofar as campuses will 
actually reopen in Fall). It will be messy to have to tell IT not to use the 
officially released binary, and most likely they just won't.

(2) is possible if we act quickly, although it leaves a "ghost version" of 
4.0.1 around (and don't try renaming tricks, it can mess up CRAN scripts - some 
of us have the scars...). It should work but it is a bit iffy because the 
actual problem is in fact in the sources and it creates a situation where the 
binary and the sources are out of sync.

(3) is clean, but it takes a while (minimum 12 days) to go through the release 
run-in. Also, for a new release, I suspect we want to have a closer look at the 
issue as we seem to be using multiple allocators on Windows in a, hmmm, 
"eclectic mix". (E.g. connections.c has both Calloc/Free and malloc/free 
combinations and AFAICT, the latter uses a different allocator.)  

-pd


> On 8 Jun 2020, at 01:20 , Abby Spurdle <spurdl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> sorry, release "versions"
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 11:17 AM Abby Spurdle <spurdl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Mon, Jun 8, 2020 at 4:09 AM Fox, John <j...@mcmaster.ca> wrote:
>>> Does it make sense to withdraw the Windows R 4.0.1 binary until the issue 
>>> is resolved?
>> 
>> Yes, it does.
>> All the release reversions should be removed.

-- 
Peter Dalgaard, Professor,
Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School
Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Phone: (+45)38153501
Office: A 4.23
Email: pd....@cbs.dk  Priv: pda...@gmail.com

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