From: Lucas Nussbaum <lucas@...>
Date: 2011-01-04T16:45:46+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:34049] Branches and releases (Was:  The rights of ruby-core people and Myth of ruby-dev)

On 04/01/11 at 06:55 +0900, NARUSE, Yui wrote:
> Some of you may don't know your rights.
> Some of you may believe the myth of ruby-dev.
> I'll explain them to clear the ruby development process and make it better.

Hi,

First, thanks a lot for posting this. This is absolutely great.

> Someone believe that many important decision of ruby is made over ruby-dev.
> But we discussed important decisions in ruby-core like [ruby-core:32009], 
> [ruby-core:25285], [ruby-core:25272], [ruby-core:32156] and so on.
> Some of them are discussed in both ruby-dev and ruby-core, but topics
> are transferred between them.

I would like to understand the policy of the Ruby 1.8.7 and 1.9.2
branches. Are there maintenance branches, containing only bugfixes?

With my Debian maintainer hat, it would be possible to follow those
branches with the packages _if_ there's a "absolutely no regression"
goal. For example, currently, for the upcoming squeeze release, we have
1.8.7p302 and 1.9.0p0. It is too late in the release process to upgrade
to newer versions because squeeze is going to be released in a few
weeks, but if the branches are known to be super-stable, it would be
possible to track the SVN branch directly in the future, bringing the
fixes to users earlier. We already do that for some patches, like
http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/ruby1.8/1.8.7.302-2/100901_threading_fixes.patch
, but it could be generalized.

While this is more a wild guess, I'd like to know what Debian should do
for the release following Debian squeeze, that is, wheezy, expected to
be released end of 2012 / beginning of 2013. Currently, we have both a
Ruby 1.8 and a Ruby 1.9(.2) package. Should we drop the Ruby 1.8 package
completely?

Is there going to be a Ruby 1.8.8 release? Isn't it too much to have
two development branches?

When Ruby 1.9.2 was released, it maintained ABI compatibility with
1.9.1. While this made our life as Debian maintainers easier, since we
could use 1.9.2 as a drop-in replacement for 1.9.1, I think that it
confused users. What are the plans for 1.9.3? Will it also maintain
"ruby compatibility level" with 1.9.1? (I would prefer if it did not,
even if it would make the Debian maintainers' life a bit harder)
When can it be expected?

Thanks again,

- Lucas