RE: patching the stable branch (was: Re: Octave 3.1.52 available for ftp)

[John W. Eaton]

On 13-Feb-2009, Schirmacher, Rolf wrote:

| Think about why it is so intersting to get fixes in the "stable" release: I
| would say it is mainly due to the fact that there are well-supported binary
| distributions of these releases and many users are using packaged
| distributions. Often, they might not even be able to re-build from the
| sources. So, they want a fix for their personal bug in the release available
| to them for use (i.e. binary).

| So, unless we want to generate regular binary
| distributions of devel snapshots,

Some distributions already do this.

| the stable binary distributions are the
| only chance for many users to get fixes.

I don't have a problem with people getting fixes.  My point is that we
should have a tighter limit on the scope of fixes so that they are not
actually desabilizing.

What I'd really like to see is less effort going to the "stable"
releases and more going to the development branch, and more frequent
releases from the development branch.

jwe