Re: [Proposed binutils PATCH] Re: Diagnosing an intricate C++ problem

["H . J . Lu" <hjl at lucon dot org>]

On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 02:10:42PM -0400, Alexander N. Kabaev wrote:
> 
> > I still don't see that is a binutils problem. It has been being done
> > this way for years in binutils. 
> 
>  And doing that for years is exactly what has given binutils the reputation of
> the project with very badly maintained _releases_. You seem to suggest that all
> interested parties should play weird russian roulette game trying to guess when
> binutils CVS HEAD branch is in reasonable shape. The problem with this approach

No. YOU have to make sure HEAD is ok for YOU.

> is that critical bug fixes applied to the tree are getting mixed with other
> commits which have potential to introduce new bugs as the new features are being
> added to the source. Having bug fixes applied to both -stable and -head branches
> elimitates the problem and provides all interested parties with a single place
> from where to get source in a _known_ stable state.

binutils is used by many platforms. Checking things into the release
branch needs to test on all those supported platforms. I simply don't
have the time to check my patches into 2 trees. Also sometimes it is
hard to tell a new feature from a bug fix. For some people, it may be
a bug fix, but for others it may be a new feature.

> 
> No "leg work" done by BSD folks will be able to offset the lack of proper
> release management. It is true, all other projects, BSDs included, were able
> to cope with the current state of affairs so far, but does that mean there is
> no place for improvement?

There are rooms for improvement. But someone has to spend time to do it.
If you want the release branch being updated, you should join the binutils
development and do it. I can only speak for myself. I don't have the
time to spend on the release branch.


H.J.