Agreed, stable branch (at least last release) should be maintained with bug fix. Force user to upgrade to trunk version is not a good option for production practice.
Ubuntu LTS (Long Term Support) release is a good example as a foundation software. --Guo On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 1:33 AM, Don Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm confused as to why not having a stable branch would even be an > option. Richard, if you found a deadlock problem in Felix in a > released version of Glassfish, surely you can't simply upgrade to the > latest Felix, and if you have a privately maintained stable fork, why > not have one that all Felix users can share? What do the rest of the > Felix users out there do about stable releases? > > If it is a problem of resources, I'm confident that if you asked, > you'd get several volunteers like myself, because most likely, they > need to be maintaining a stable fork anyway, so why not share it with > the community. Trying to host a stable branch at another site isn't > really an option, because users want an "official" Felix release from > a group they trust, Apache, not some dodgy github fork or vendor > branch with selfish motivations. Furthermore, Felix users, like > myself, want a stable branch that is supported by the Felix project, > if for no other reason than only its committers seem to have access to > the test suite to test against possible regressions. There is > currently no way for me to know that if I backport a fix that I didn't > break something else. Sure, Atlassian products have a bunch of tests, > but we can't test every operation, every platform, every set of > possible bundles, and even, integration tests like those only go so > far. > > It is especially important for a framework to have a stable branch > that your users can trust. Upgrading major versions of Felix is a > risky proposition that always results in at least a week or so of > issues, and that doesn't include the ones that pour in from support. > However, I have no choice since really critical fixes like deadlocks > and infinite loops are only fixed on trunk. Felix, being a core > framework, is at the bottom of the development stack and as such, > needs to be as stable as possible. > > Again, I'm happy to do whatever work necessary to get stable releases > of Felix out, but as I said, I think having stable releases is a > fundamental requirement if Felix is meant to be used in supported > production systems. > > Don > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
