[cmake-developers] branch HandleCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER_ARG1InEclipse for 2.8.6 ?

Alan W. Irwin irwin at beluga.phys.uvic.ca
Sat Oct 1 17:01:44 EDT 2011


On 2011-10-01 20:13+0200 Alexander Neundorf wrote:

> On Saturday 01 October 2011, David Cole wrote:
>> Brad and Bill and I will look at this Monday.
>>
>> We are closing in on the final 2.8.6 release. If we take changes Monday,
>> we'll merge them, await the dashboard results on Tuesday morning, and then
>> build the final 2.8.6. If we take no changes, I'll build 2.8.6 on Monday.
>>
>> You must admit, this fix affects an awfully small percentage of the total
>> CMake user base... So we may not take it. But, since it's so small, we may.
>
> That's what I thought too :-)

"How many last minute changes to accept" appears to be a universal
issue for releasing software.  I have turned more and more
conservative on this issue as I gained experience with the downsides
of such changes for other projects.

For me it now boils down to these questions:

1. If there is a high upside (many users benefit) to the last-minute
change, then why aren't you delaying the release to make sure the
change is properly tested?

2. If there is a low upside to the last-minute change (only a few
users benefit), can you bet your project's reputation that there is no
downside for all users or would it be better to wait for the next
release cycle to gain more testing of the change?

CMake developers will obviously have to make up their own mind on this
issue for their releases, but as you can tell from the way those
questions are posed, I almost always discourage last-minute changes in
releases for projects where I am one of the developers.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
__________________________



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