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Re: 5.8.2 is built as 5.8.1

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From:
Nicholas Clark
Date:
October 17, 2003 12:09
Subject:
Re: 5.8.2 is built as 5.8.1
Message ID:
20031017190818.GC89417@plum.flirble.org
As I see it there are two logical times to bump the version number.

a: immediately after a release
b: just before the release

(for some value of "just", which isn't important here)

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 09:41:43AM -0400, Andy Dougherty wrote:

> SUMMARY:
> 
> Maintenance track:  I would recommend bumping the patchlevel when the
> pumpkin holder believes it is time to release snapshots for testing with
> the world outside perl (e.g. other programs or modules that may have
> patchlevel-specific code). Don't bump it too soon, because then it gets
> out into the world and you may get bogus bug reports for some time to
> come.  But don't wait too long either, because there is likely some code
> out there that has patchlevel-specific workarounds in it.  Also, the perl
> core itself has a few patchlevel-specific parts that need to be tested.

Competent people installing unreleased versions does not worry me nearly
as much as joe public running unreleased versions. My understanding was
that for quite a while RedHat were shipping (with Jarkko's blessing)
a perl that was 5.8.0+lotsofmaint, which would report itself as 5.8.0,
not 5.8.1.

People are arguing for the version bump immediately after release. In that
case, all those RedHat perls out there would be reporting themselves as
5.8.1. I could write an release a module now with

  use 5.8.1;

because I know that it needs a bug fix in 5.8.1. But the "5.8.1" out
there isn't 5.8.1-enough for the job. And it will take a lot of head
scratching and time wasting to find that out.

For any snapshot that escapes to people beyond this list, I'd much prefer
it to understate its capabilities, rather than pretend to be something
that it's not.

(This understatement logic assumes that our rate of adding bug fixes is
much greater than our rate of adding bugs.)

Nicholas Clark

PS Was anything significant fixed between RC3 and the final release?
   I'm told that panther is shipping with RC3, not the release, hence we
   and module authors may find that the conversation with the user goes:

   "5.8.1"
   You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

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