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

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Mon, 08 Apr 2002 22:29:37 -0400

As long as I've been in the FreeBSD world, I've never seen an alpha/beta release. What you get are the occasional Developer Preview (I think there is usually one before each X release (in X.Y). Then there are release candidates, usually 2-3. Otherwise, people are assumed to work off the trees directly, and there are tools to keep your system in check very easily.

It's just in the naming then, nothing special.

I have a machine here (dual Ppro, a bit antiquated, but it serves it's purpose) which CVSups (an automated CVS system) an updated environment every day, then builds the entire thing (which can take hours). It's painless for me, and I get to test some things I'm working on against the bleeding edge with little or no effort.

In the FreeBSD world, you don't shove experimental code that hasn't gone through "some testing" into the CURRENT tree. It may not build everywhere, but it's gone through some testing, and usually will not cause anyone serious pain.

Same for Python. We flame developers who break the build, and as a result this almost never happens (unless the tests pass on their machine but not elsewhere). We review code in the SF patch manager (painful).

I guess in the end, I see several competing interests here:

- People who want minimal to no backward incompatibilities, ever

Just say no to upgrades.

- People who want to know that a release will be "supported" for some defined period

I'd be happy to promise that release 2.X will be supported until 2.(X+2) (final) is released.

- People who want the bleeding edge to be more available

I believe there are nightly checkout tarballs available from somewhere. But most people go directly to CVS. Anyway, I don't think this group has any problems with the current system. :-)

I would think that 90% of this can be solved with simple communications of what should be expected. It's not unreasonable to say that 2.1 will be supported with BUG FIXED (not features, bug fixes) until 2.4 or 2.5 is released. If we're on a 6-month "minor release" schedule, then that's roughly a year of stability. That seems generous.

I think your math is off (2.4 would be 20 months) but something like that, yeah.

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