Re: GAS copyright update

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   Date: Wed, 3 May 2000 12:49:30 -0700
   From: "David O'Brien" <obrien@NUXI.com>

   I looked at the website, but didn't see the branching/release paradigm
   Binutils uses (ie, FreeBSD has both a -CURRENT (trunk) and multiple
   -STABLE branches (RELENG_{4,3,22}).  Features enter on the trunk and only
   if highly tested and stable can they even be candidates for committing to
   a -STABLE branch.  Users expect -STABLE branches to change slowly, so
   many things that could be back ported aren't to keep from disturbing
   deployed servers.

   Can you take a moment and explain it?

We do not have the concept of an ongoing -STABLE branch.  The GNU
tools are oriented around releases.

We are in the middle of a release cycle for 2.10.  Philip Blundel
<Philip.Blundell@pobox.com> is the release manager.

In the CVS repository, the 2.10 branch is a branch named
binutils-2_10-branch.  When this branch becomes stable, Philip will
turn it into the 2.10 release.

There will probably be some problems with the 2.10 release.  Those
will be patched on the branch, and turned into a 2.10.1 release (and
perhaps 2.10.2, and so on).

After the 2.10 release cycle is finished, the 2.10 branch will no
longer be used.

In the meantime, development continues on the trunk.  When we make a
2.11 release, it will be branched from the trunk at that time.

Ian