[Lazarus] FPC 2.4.2 and Lazarus

[Marco van de Voort]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 01:12:33AM +0300, Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis wrote:
> > release candidates.
> 
> AFAIU, the fpc 2.4.2 is a maintenance release of the 2.4.0 branch. If 
> i'm correct, no new features ( except maybe very small ones which don't 
> break the compatibility ) and only bug fixes backported or not.

It is roughly that way for the compiler source. 

With the RTL (except some of the deeper regions) and packages we are a bit
less strict.  (because otherwise it would take a major cycle for minor
improvements to reach users).  A fix typically sits a few weeks to several
months in trunk before it is merged to fixes though, depending on complexity
and risks.
 
> maintenance release will have a smaller Release Candidate cycle. After 
> all, it's all about fixing regressions and bugs. But, it will have one, 
> right ? The "take the snapshot as a Release Candidate" is not an option 
> for me.

It takes only one failure to break a release, and release candidates are
about making sure that doesn't happen.

That said, fixes releases are indeed faster, but that has mostly to do with
the fact that major releases are the first releases of a branch that hasn't
seen releases yet. Thus there are often a lot of little release engineering
things to fix. Specially for the rarer platforms that often only see major
activity around a release (since they are threathened to be cut from it).

It is often more the release engineering and the waiting till all platforms
are built that eats the time of RC cycles and delays releases time and time
again, and less bugs discovered during release cycles (which happens, but
are not that much responsible for delays)

> The Alpha, Beta, RCx, Release, Maintenance cycle is a must if you care 
> about your users. The people who use your product. Don't make them chase 
> a moving target. If you need to break something do so. In another major 
> or minor release. Not in maintenance releases.

Do you care about users? Do you volunteer for release engineering? We always
have a few spots open?