[Python-Dev] Re: Stability and change (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Mon, 08 Apr 2002 12:21:00 -0400

one last thing before I head off to sleep - it seems to me that one of the groups we really want to make sure we support is the people doing the development of python.

That's without question. The whole discussion is how we can also make the rest of the world happy.

If making lots of micro-releases is going to lead to far more triage work and chasing up bug reports, then that's a bad bad thing.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here. If you're saying that more micro releases will lead users to report more bugs in them, that's a good thing. We want users to report where our new code breaks things for them, and we're having a hard time getting them to download the alpha/beta releases.[*] OTOH, if you're worried that we'll try to clear the bugs database before each micro release, forget it -- that will never happen. If anything, PEP 102 should become a lot shorter.

[*] Unfortunately, I'm not so sure that changing labels will help much. Few people download alpha or beta releases. Why would they start download micro releases, when we make it clear that those are just as unstable?

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)