Re: GCC 4.3 release schedule

[Andrew MacLeod <amacleod at redhat dot com>]

Richard Guenther wrote:
> > Sure, I think it boils down to the same thing from a conceptual point of
> > view, but perhaps the nitty gritty details are easier if you keep it as
> > mainline so we dont have to check everything into 2 branches.  Bottom
> > line is you freeze development until its time to release.
> >     
>
> Well... this is the point of having stage3 ;)  Of course work goes on on
> branches.  One point of essentially freezing mainline until the release
> is to not pessimize people fixing bugs for the release instead of doing
> work on the already-open-after-branching stage1.  This theoretically
>   

but people do continue working on branches parallel to stage 3, and we 
are looking for a way to focus people onto stage 3 in order to get it 
out in a timely fashion. simply locking it down doesn't do that, either 
in a branch or on mainline, we've seen it in the past. I've been guilty 
of it. I have had other big ticket items I'm working on, and if the 
release isn't something that fits into plans anywhere, it doesn't matter 
when it gets released, so the other work is more important.  And lets 
face it, bug fixing isn't exciting and motivating work to most people.  
We need a reason to get interested enough to focus on getting the 
release out.
> would allow shortening stage1 drastically (to lets say 2 weeks of
> branch merging and another 4 weeks of general "patches") to get back
> to a 6 month release cycle (I personally think the each-stage-is-2-month
> is not realistic).
>
>   
I don't think we need a 6 month release cycle myself, but maybe thats 
just me.  Are people actually looking for new compilers that 
frequently?  I wouldn't think that would be the norm. thats barely time 
for the compiler to properly stabilize.  I think it would be even harder 
to get focus on stage 3 that frequently. I still think we need to try to 
have a look at the schedules of the various groups that USE the 
compiler, and set our release schedules to something that is going to be 
useful to multiple groups, thus generating the most interest in a  release.

Andrew