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GDB 5.2 et.al. release schedule
- From: Andrew Cagney <ac131313 at cygnus dot com>
- To: gdb at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 15:52:26 -0500
- Subject: GDB 5.2 et.al. release schedule
See also: http://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html
There have been plenty of concerns raised about the unreliability of the
GDB release cycle: 12 months, 18 months, ... I'm looking for more robust
ways of addressing this. (btw the 5.2 release manager role is still
available) (I promise not to break an arm again :-).
In previous e-mail I've mentioned the intention to branch 5.2 mid Feb
and release it mid March.
With those two points in mind, and looking across at GCC for idea's, I'd
like to propose that GDB have a more formal release schedule.
I should note that GDB 5.1 established a new precident - it was released
with several targets (HP/UX, ALPHA) known to be broken. Being willing
to do this greatly simplified the task of the release person as they
should no longer feel guilty when documenting that certain
targets/natives just don't work.
GCC's cycle is every 6 months. GDB could go for 12, 6, 4, or 3 months.
In the below I've somewhat arbitrarially chosen 4 months. That would
give three major and (possibly) three minor releases a year.
01 Jan - 5.1.1
02 Feb - branch (5.2)
03 Mar - release (5.2)
04 Apr
05 May - 5.2.x?
06 Jun - branch (5.3)
07 Jul - release (5.3)
08 Aug
09 Sep - 5.3.x?
10 Oct - branch (5.4)
11 Nov - release (5.4)
12 Dec
.
.
.
Oh, I'm never going to do a sub-sub release again. As I've now learnt,
they end up wasteing everyones time. Instead, respins will always come
from the head but may need to occure with little notice.
Looking at other release cycles, a 6 month schedule would better tie in
with GCC. While I'm open to opinion, my gut feeing is that the GCC
release schedule/model really don't map well onto GDB. GDB is far more
of an iterative development model and as such should encourage more
frequent releases.
Another is a 3 month schedule, ulgh.
comments, thoughts, suggestions etc,
Andrew
PS: If this is agreed to, I'll add it to cron so that no one can forget :-)