[fpc-devel] Considerations about observer [was: Free Pascal 2.6.2 rc1]

[Jonas Maebe]

On 28 Nov 2012, at 16:02, luiz americo pereira camara wrote:

> 2012/11/28 Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be>:
>>
>> Personally, I think a release candidate is too late. A release  
>> candidate
>> freezes all interfaces (even a beta release does so already,  
>> normally).
>> Generally the only fixes still performed afterwards are for blocking
>> crashers/failures, major security holes or build issues.
>
> Yes. This proposed change breaks the concept of release candidate.
>
> My point here is this is the first release open for wide test with  
> this feature.

The first release of new features in FPC always happens via the svn  
repository. That is the moment to test them and give feedback. Once  
they end up in a release, they are final. Daily snapshots of FPC that  
can be used for testing are available from the Lazarus project.

> Given that better discuss / test / change such important change
> earlier than later, nothing stops to treat this release as a beta (or
> whatever name is appropriate) even if was formally released as a RC.

The appropriate name would be "alpha". What stops treating the release  
candidate as an alpha and making invasive changes to it, is that this  
would significantly slow down the release process (every time we ship  
a release candidate, someone could pop and say "hey, please change  
this RC to an alpha version and add/change this -- this would also  
discourage people from testing the svn versions, since they'd assume  
they can always delay the release if there's something they don't like).

The only possible alternative in this case that I can see would be to  
remove the new feature altogether from the release (that's still a  
change, but one thta changes things back to the situation of the  
previous release and hence is known to be "stable"). However, from  
what I read from Michael's replies, that would not help since he does  
not seem to be inclined to change things.


Jonas
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