Re: 2.12.x branch future?

[cgd at broadcom dot com]

At Sat, 9 Mar 2002 21:28:33 +0000 (UTC), "Daniel Jacobowitz" wrote:
> > Is there going to be a 2.12.1?  ("hope so" 8-)
> 
> I don't know.  I would rather not; I would rather a 2.13 whenever
> someone feels the need for a 2.12.

I can understand that.  8-)


> > Is the branch open for commits?  (I've found a few bugs already.  8-)
> 
> This depends on the answer to the previous question; it is either open
> or dead.  I have very little preference - what little I have is towards
> killing the branch, because that is a lot easier on the poor release
> manager.  If a critical failure comes up, we can fix that on the branch
> and release a 2.12.1, but I don't want it accumulating random
> differences.

So, my concern here is, if it's decided N weeks from now to open the
branch for changes, there may be "minor" but still important fixes
which won't go into a patch release.

Things like the MIPS disassembly abi detection thing (which is -- i
believe -- almost hashed out 8-).  That bug causes mis-disassembly for
all non-trivial, newly-created mips1 - mips4 o32/o64 binaries, with
the exception of ones as trivial as most of the existing gas test
cases.  8-)

I don't think that's a _critical_ fix; it's not keeping people from
using the tools, and even on MIPS if they understand what's going on
they can compensate.

But it would be really lame if there's a 2.12.1 and it _didn't_ fix
that problem.  8-)


It's much easier to begin accumulating "important" fixes immediately
if there's _any_ chance of a 2.12.1 release.

(It also means that if people _do_ want to try to follow the head of
the release branch, to get the latest greatest 'stable' fixes, they
could do that... in fact, _I'd_ probably do that for some purposes,
but to my mind that's secondary.)


chris