[Lazarus] Release Candidate 1 of Lazarus 1.6

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

Michael Schnell wrote:

> Obviously it will not be in the first 1.6 release, but happily the 
> Lazarus releases are scheduled a lot more often than the fpc releases, 
> so I will not have to wait another three years until the code might be 
> published.

Quite frankly I feel that the Lazarus version numbering is progressing 
faster than is reasonable, and that it would be highly desirable to have 
a "Long Term Support" v2.0.x or even 3.0.x which could be presented to 
people outside the project as a robust version to use with FPC 3.0.x.

It's not at all easy to explain to an outsider- for example a Delphi 
refugee- that if he wants some version of Lazarus for a particular 
feature he'll then need an unrelated FPC version as the compiler:

! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-0.9.24+2.2.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-0.9.26+2.2.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-0.9.28+2.4.0
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-0.9.30+2.4.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.0.0+2.4.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.0.0+2.6.0
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.0.8+2.6.2
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.0.14+2.6.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.2.6+2.6.4
! /usr/local/bin/lazarus-1.4.2+3.0.0

Industry doctrine has it that v3 of a piece of software is usually a 
sweet spot, and while I'm a very junior member of this community I 
really feel that we should be trying to hit it.

Alternatively, Turbo Pascal v3 was recognised as one of the "greats" of 
early PC software (I remember when the company I worked with sold what 
they knew was the last copy they could get), and Delphi v2 was 
groundbreaking because it was the first Win-32 version (i.e. to run on 
an OS with decent preemptive multitasking etc.).

How about a stable Lazarus v2.0.x, with as many bugs and development 
quirks as possible worked out of it, based on FPC 3.0.x and with a 
support commitment from both teams?

Or with the number of exciting things that the core developers have on 
the boil, is promoting the project to outsiders simply irrelevant these 
days?

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]