Re: GOP2-2b - Stable 2.16.x releases (dictator) (probable decision)

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Aug 01, 2012 at 06:36:14PM +0200, John Mandereau wrote:
> Il giorno mer, 01/08/2012 alle 15.52 +0100, Graham Percival ha scritto:
> > Regardless of the question of having a tuple of four values, it
> > would be nice to support build numbers, i.e. 2.15.43-2:
> > http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=977
> > 
> > This definitely requires work in both lilypond git and GUB git.
> 
> I'm confident we don't want to add support for tuples of four values or
> release tags in convert-ly, but website generation and docs generation
> (Texinfo macros and HTML footers) need work.  Do you prefer that I spend
> effort on building GUB for the coming week or rather make patches on
> lilypond.git only?

Hmm.  I can't answer this directly, but I'll pass along my
considerations:

- if you try to compile GUB on debian unstable (or any other
  recent distro), you will likely encounter odd compile failures.
  These are important to fix at some point in time (otherwise we'd
  be stuck GUB on ubuntu 10.04 only), and require a great deal of
  knowledge of compilers and searching for solutions online.
  OTOH, it might just work "out of the box" in which case it'll
  just take 6-12 hours and then be working.
- I think that supporting build numbers will be an easier
  introduction to version number handling in GUB and our docs than
  jumping straight into 4-tuples.  The first step is to make it
  work in "make website", which is infinitely easier than trying
  to do anything in GUB.  This is a relatively easy thing to fix,
  so it might make sense to leave it for a relative beginner...
  OTOH, the bug has existed for two years, so might as well tackle
  it now.  Also, David is quite likely to want to use build
  numbers if they are available.
  (whereas I'm happy to say "screw users" or "screw version
  numbers" and either not bother updating with -2 if there's a
  serious problem, or else bump to .x+1 one day after a .x
  release; neither of those options are particularly ideal for a
  stable branch)


- Graham