[fpc-devel] On code cleanup

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Jonas Maebe said:
> > Well, Lazarus is currently amassing large handcoded UTF8 ansistring
> > codebases, something I don't think that is healthy. If unicode is  
> > postponed
> > to the next major release, it will be long, very long before this is  
> > cleaned
> 
> Waiting with releasing 2.4 and spending time on 2.2.x fixes releases  
> (instead of on a 2.4 release) is not going to speed up the  
> implementation of full unicode support either.

Why I don't entirely agree with that (major releases are simply more widely
spaced because their scope was constantly upscaled in the past), I do see
the problem that there is currently nobody working on the strings and
generics. So waiting an year might not change the picture at all.

So in short: you convinced me.

(I thought btw, generics in 2.2.4 had improved to being more or less
usable?)

> I'm not aware of any big problems with 2.4 at this point (relative to  
> 2.2.4, or in general, except for what has been mentioned). As far as  
> I'm concerned, it would be perfectly fine to split off a 2.4 branch  
> today, and to release a first beta.

> I don't know what the situation is  
> regarding the database components though (and maybe other things with  
> which I have little to do).

I don't see problems too from my viewpoint. But I don't know db components
too. Maybe we should ask the lazarus people if there are "hot" items.
 
> > ere is some sense in that yes. Still, I keep getting the feeling then
> > that we don't deliver on the 2.4 promises then, and worse that the early
> > 2.4 delays the impotant features more than that it helps bring them to
> > users faster.
> 
> I think it is simply a bad idea to promise things before the work has  
> been done.

I don't know. While that sounds safer, letting stuff forever in limbo just
creates a lot of insecurities about direction, and that might be worse than
an occasional broken or postponed promise.