[Python-Dev] New functionality in micro releases (was: Documenting branch policy) (original) (raw)

Jack Jansen Jack.Jansen at cwi.nl
Sun Sep 7 23:25:08 EDT 2003

On 7-sep-03, at 21:15, Martin v. Löwis wrote:

Maintenance branches are for bug fixes only; This question is heavily debated. Alex Martelli, for example, favours a policy where new (in a strict sense) features are acceptable if they don't break anything, and are "minor", in some sense.

With Python 2.3 included in MacOSX 10.3 I would be heavily opposed to this. I know, I've done it myself all the time in the past (with MacPython for OS9), but with Python 2.3 we have the situation that the majority of Python installations (I think it's safe to take the guess that MacOSX 10.3 installations will soon outnumber all other Pythons together) will stay at 2.3 until the next release of MacOSX.

This means that by adding even the slightest bit of functionality you will make life difficult for developers: they themselves will probably track Python releases, but their customers most likely won't. Note that the MacPython infrastructure (bundlebuilder and such) really invites people to distribute their applications to third parties. And judging by the discussions on pythonmac-sig a lot of people are already doing this.

Even bug fixes already have an impact (because the developer won't see a bug that will show up on the deployment machine), but adding functionality would exacerbate the issue.

Jack Jansen, <Jack.Jansen at cwi.nl>, http://www.cwi.nl/~jack If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma Goldman

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