2.22.1 Possible -> Yes!

[Alan Modra]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 10:07:27PM -0400, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> a release from trunk means 2.23, not another 2.22.

What matters the number?

>  i also don't think you can 
> say that the trunk is that much better considering it hasn't been released and 
> tested on distros for a variety of targets.

I do claim that.  I can claim that based on the number of bugs I know
have been fixed on trunk but not on the branch.  I also know that
people use trunk binutils in production, and HJ releases binutils
effectively off trunk all the time, so it's not as if trunk is only
tested by developers.  Even distros use trunk snapshots as their base
for binutils, eg. RHEL6.3 is based on binutils-2.20.51.0.2.

>  if trunk really truly was as well 
> tested & stable as you say, then we wouldn't have releases which were badly 
> broken for some targets.  this isn't anything specific to the 2.22 branch 
> point, just a reality of development -- bugs slip through.  every release has 
> its own set of issues.

Long release cycles tend to break less used targets.  I think my
suggestion will allow shorter release cycles, simply because the
release process will not impact developer time so much.

-- 
Alan Modra
Australia Development Lab, IBM