Re: Release Plan Updates

[Andreas Jaeger <aj at suse dot de>]

Mark Mitchell <mark@codesourcery.com> writes:

> This email describes decisons by the Steering Commitee's to adjust the
> release schedule.  The primary goal of these changes is to accomodate
> the schedules of the various GNU/Linux and other free system distributors.
> These distributors would like to upgrade to a stable compiler whose C++
> ABI is less likely to change henceforth.
>
> Therefore, as independently suggested on this list, the SC has decided
> that:
>
> 1. The 3.1.1 release will proceed as planned.  (More on that in my next
>    email.)
>
> 2. There will be no 3.1.2 release.  Instead, there will be a GCC 3.2
>    release which is GCC 3.1.1 with those C++ ABI fixes present on the
>    mainline.  This release will take place shortly after GCC 3.1.1.
>    (It will happen approximately as quickly as I can create branches
>    and Jason can commit the relevant fixes.)

What patches exactly are needed?
- Jason's patches
- a new libstdc++ version number?

>
> 3. GCC 3.2.1 (and perhaps GCC 3.2.2) will be released when GCC 3.1.2
>    (and perhaps GCC 3.1.3) would otherwise have been released.  Despite
>    their release numbers, these will be compilers off what we now think
>    of as the GCC 3.1 sourcebase.
>
> 4. GCC 3.3 will be released when GCC 3.2 was originally scheduled, and
>    will be made from the current mainline.
>
> If you're a GCC developer, none of this makes too much difference to
> you; all the same check-in rules and guidlines are in place.
>
> However, if you're a GCC user you should be aware that fixes that GCC
> 3.1.1 be the last release C++ ABI-compatible with GCC 3.1.
>
> Finally, if you're a distributor you should be aware that there's no
> way to be 100% sure that GCC 3.3 will be ABI compatible with GCC 3.2;
> this special re-jigerring of things only ups the odds that things will
> remain copmatible.  While maintaining the ABI is amongst our most
> important goals, there are events that could make it necessary to make
> changes.

Do we have any open ABI bugs?  We should close them if we have some.

>
> Your Release Manager,

Thanks a lot for making this decision!

Andreas
-- 
 Andreas Jaeger
  SuSE Labs aj@suse.de
   private aj@arthur.inka.de
    http://www.suse.de/~aj