Re: Merging the msvc branch into maint

[Peter Rosin]

Stefano Lattarini skrev 2011-12-22 09:41:
> On 12/22/2011 08:26 AM, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
> Hi Peter.
> 
>> Since the msvc branch has been merged into both branch-1.11 and master,
>> it seems natural to also merge it into maint. No?
>>
> I'd rather not.  First, it wouldn't be useful, since we do 1.11.x maintenance
> releases from branch-1.11 only, we plan to do the next 1.12 release from
> master, and both of these branches already contain the features from msvc.

I'm ok with that.  However, ...

> Second, and more important, the versions of msvc merged into branch-1.11 and
> master are sligthly different, in that the one on branch-1.11 doesn't have
> the new `extra-portability' warnings enabled by -Wall (this is required for
> backward compatibility, which a maintenance version should pay particular
> attention to, but is not a behaviour we would want to carry in future
> versions, for reasons you had so eloquently explained in a past discussion).

... I don't believe this to be true.  The (important) differences you
describe are indeed part of branch-1.11, but not msvc. They were added to
the msvc-for-1.11 branch which was then merged into branch-1.11 leaving
the original msvc branch free from this issue.

The only (non-merge) commits in msvc that are not also in master are:
b722b108 "news: fix suboptimal wording"
620ba14f "tests: various minor tweakings, mostly related to AM_PROG_AR"

(unless something has been merged into msvc via maint that has not yet
been merged into master, but that *should* be benign)

Those two commits are already in branch-1.11, and I don't see how merging
msvc into maint is going to cause any trouble. And indeed a (throwaway)
merge of msvc into maint and then maint into master show only the
inevitable conflicts in NEWS and a trivial-looking conflict in syntax.test.

> So, if we merge msvc into maint as-is, that would create merge conflicts when
> we merge maint back into branch-1.11, and worse, would cause the code from
> maint to have a behaviour more similar to that of the next major version than
> to that of the next maintenance version.  OTOH, we could backport the hacks
> for 1.11.2 into maint, and confuse the already-too-messy automake history
> even more.  Neither of these two possibility should particularly appealing to
> me, given that in the end they do not offer any real advantage anyway.

This is a conclusion from your above faulty assumption, I believe,
and continuing the (throwaway) merging, merging maint into branch-1.11
after the above (naturally) adds nothing to branch-1.11.

But it was just a suggestion. If you don't want it, then I won't insist.

Cheers,
Peter