[Lazarus] Release Candidate 1 of Lazarus 1.6

[Juha Manninen]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2015 at 4:31 PM, Mark Morgan Lloyd
<markMLl.lazarus at telemetry.co.uk> wrote:
> 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.

Uhhh...
Until now people have complained about release cycle being too slow,
and quite rightfully so.
Now you complain that it is too fast. We can never please everybody
apparently ...

A "Long Term Support" version in a development tool project with
limited development resources makes no sense because the tool can be
updated so easily by anybody. A server Linux distro is a different
thing.
Still, as Mattias wrote you can volunteer to maintain a "Long Term
Support" version if you consider it important.


> 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:

Your idea of a longer release cycle would make things worse. This
issue went upside-down in your thoughts for some reason.
We are releasing soon after FPC so that users get the latest compiler.
If we waited longer (as you suggested) then people would indeed "need
an unrelated FPC version as the compiler".


> 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.

That is pure psychology. Not based on technical merits.


> 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?

Now you ask the mythical "development teams" to do more work than they
already do.
This is open source. Anybody who contributes bug fixes is a
"developer". You can also fix bugs and improve quality.
Your comments imply that the quality is now poor. I don't agree.


> 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?

I don't know what you mean. There are still essential pieces missing
from Lazarus. Of course they must be implemented. Do you mean it
should be left in an unfinished state?

Juha