From: Ian Macdonald <ian@...>
Date: 2003-07-31T14:26:32+09:00
Subject: delay release of 1.8.0 (was: Re: What's with -F in 1.8?)

On Wed 30 Jul 2003 at 15:43:15 +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

> |What gives? Why don't Ruby 1.8 use a regex with -F?
> 
> It's a bug.  Thank you for finding it before 1.8.0 final.

This is liable to be a controversial comment, but I'm beginning to think
it may be prudent to delay the release of 1.8.0 by a few weeks.

I've been using the 1.8.0 snapshots for many months and I'm very pleased
with the new version. However, the last couple of preview releases have
had serious problems. Tk stopped working, command-line options broke and
a few other serious bugs have been found.

It strikes me that these are not the kind of bugs that should be
coming to light with only a few days left until the official release.
Small, obscure bugs that occur only in rare circumstances, yes, but not
obvious, fundamental bugs that cause whole categories of programs to
fail.

Ruby is getting more and more attention these days and we can expect the
release of 1.8.0 to generate quite a bit of publicity and attract a slew
of new users to the language. First impressions count for a lot and so
it would be a real shame if new users were in any way led to conclude
that Ruby is unstable or not ready for prime time.

So, rather than release 1.8.0 to the masses within the next few days,
would it not be better to institute a code freeze and wait for things to
stabilise as the bug reports become fewer and fewer over the next few
weeks?

It seems to me that these few weeks could make all the difference
between a good release and a terrific release. We've waited this long
for 1.8.0; perhaps we should wait just a little bit longer...

Ian
-- 
Ian Macdonald               | Robot, n.:  University administrator. 
System Administrator        | 
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