[fpc-devel] [RFC] Modernising the FPC Release Process -- Proposal for Review

[Tomas Hajny]

On 2026-04-16 11:08, Michael Van Canneyt via fpc-devel wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Apr 2026, Marco van de Voort via fpc-devel wrote:
>> Op 16-4-2026 om 00:30 schreef Tomas Hajny via fpc-devel:
>>> 
>>> As somebody having been involved in that role in the past (see 
>>> https://wiki.freepascal.org/Release_Template and e.g. 
>>> https://wiki.freepascal.org/Release_2.0.4), I can say for sure that 
>>> the release coordinator / release master / ... certainly doesn't need 
>>> to know all the details of the compiler, RTL and everything else at 
>>> the same time :-) - this isn't the issue. From my experience, making 
>>> sure that people who can tackle specific tasks blocking the release 
>>> (should it be particular manual steps in the release building 
>>> process, or fixing some issue which popped out during the build), 
>>> find needed time for addressing the needed things, is the biggest 
>>> obstacle.
>> 
>> Amen.
> 
> 2 things:
> 
> It's 2026. The world has changed.
> 
> Back in 2022 that was correct reasoning. Today I will ask Claude to fix 
> it.
> This will seriously reduce the need to wait.

Still, you need somebody able to prompt Claude and review the output - 
somebody who understands the area which need to be fixed, otherwise 
you'd apply changes blindly.


> Secondly:
> 
> For a release train I simply do not intend to wait for the non-major 
> platforms:
> 
> The release train only waits for mac/windows/linux. If another platform 
> is
> included: so much the better. If not, nothing is lost:
> 
> Having a branch/tag "release/3.2.4-os2" is not an issue, that some 
> small fixes may be needed to build for the other platforms builds to 
> function is acceptable, and can be done from the released branch. We 
> only punish ourselves by
> requiring the exact same tag for all platforms. Remove that need and we 
> can
> continue much faster.

That's funny. When exactly was a FPC release waiting for fixes needed 
for the OS/2 target? If the answer is "never", how can removing such a 
supposed restriction (which never existed since 1.0.0 at least) allow 
continuing much faster?


> The risk of this will be smaller if we have a good testing & builder 
> infrastructure
> set up: if a non-major platform can be included in that, then the 
> problem simply
> does not arise.

I don't think that I've ever opposed that by a single word.


> Here at work we exclusively use linux to build Delphi applications for 
> 6 platforms. This is in no way different from what FPC needs to do.

If building for all FPC major targets may be performed on Linux 
(including Mac OS X and Windows installers) and somebody sets it up that 
way, I'll be happy. Building for OS/2 cannot be performed that way (at 
least no directly), but again, that is not an issue and never has been.

Tomas