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Postings from October 2003
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.Thread Previous | Thread Next