Re: crosstool status

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday at mindspring dot com>]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Steven Scholz wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Tue, 22 Mar 2005, Martin Egholm Nielsen wrote:
> >
> >
> > > > Plus I think it's worth getting away from the whole notion of
> > > > 0.28, which metamorphasized a bit too much during its many months
> > > > of existence.
> >
> >
> > it's not like it makes a difference one way or the other but,
> > pedantically, calling it 0.28 *does* leapfrog *all* release
> > candidates, including the unofficial one you referred to earlier.
>
> However, Please let us call it 0.29 (or 1.0).
>
> I don't want to use an "old" version. And 0.28(whatever) has been
> around for ages now. So 0.29 (or 0.9 or 1.0) would just make clear,
> it's something new(er)!

one more suggestion (as if you needed any more).  from the recent
traffic on this list, it seems that there are still some known bugs in
crosstool, which is to be expected, no problem with that. if that's
the case, though, i would make the argument that what is warranted is
yet another *release candidate*.  0.28-rc40, anyone? :-)

philosophically (at least in my experience), putting a regular version
number on something (0.29? 1.0?) means that it has passed at least
some level of Q/A testing, it appears to perform nominally and there
are no obvious flaws or show-stoppers in the code that is *already
there*.  these kinds of releases don't have to be fully-featured --
there could still be "coming soon" features, but the salient point is
that what's there works fairly reliably.

release candidates, OTOH, make no such promise.  their purpose, it
seems to me, is to get the product into testers' hands and let them
pound on it, having already admitted that there are still quirks to be
ironed out and newer releases to come.

in the end, it's just a number, of course.  but i submit that the type
of version number sometimes plays a role in letting someone set their
expectations properly.  if it's "0.28-rc40", just looking at that
version number will warn people that it's still a work in progress and
they might have a few problems.  labelling something "1.0", however,
really kind of makes some promises about quality that you'd better be
prepared to live up to.

in any event, whatever is decided, the important thing is to get a
newer version into everyone's hands, even if it has known issues.  but
if there are clearly-identified problems that won't be fixed before
that next release, i'd lean toward a new release candidate number.
just my $0.03 canadian.

rday

p.s.  any chance of getting an official crosstool issue tracker?
maybe like the one now used for busybox:

http://bugs.busybox.net/view_all_bug_page.php

or is there one already and i've just never seen it?

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