From: Urabe Shyouhei <shyouhei@...>
Date: 2011-01-04T17:43:40+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:34051] Re: Branches and releases (Was:  The rights of ruby-core people and Myth of ruby-dev)

Hi, I think I should answer this.

(2011/01/04 16:45), Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> 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?

Short answer: we ship what's necessary.

Longer one: yes, they're maintenance branches.  But the definition of "bugfix"
might be difficult. See what Kirk Haines says about it in this list
[ruby-core:25098] http://markmail.org/message/bpebfac47bn6jgdf

> With my Debian maintainer hat, it would be possible to follow those
> branches with the packages _if_ there's a "absolutely no regression"
> goal.

Goal yes.  But not guaranteed.

> 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.

Might be harsh but I think it's debian people who should judge if a branch is
"super-stable" or not.  It's easy for me to say so; but that doesn't mean
anything, does it?  Of course I don't intend to break anything in my branch
though...  You should be able to interpret the ChangeLog.

> 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.

This is a wise way for you to catch up the upstream.

> While this is more a wild guess,

Questions below are beyond me; and I guess there are no consensus.