Johan Holmberg <holmberg / iar.se> writes:

>       If the 1.7 line is becoming the de-facto version people
>       are using, I think the handling of releases should be be more
>       "formal", so Andy can base his installer on a "real" release.

This is the problem, rather than the solution.

We should not be seeing known problems being fixed only in the
development branch. If as a community we are serious about seeing Ruby
in widespread use, then we need to put priority into supporting the
stable releases: there should be *no* known problems in a 1.6 branch
that have solutions in a development branch. Instead, it should be the
norm that developers cannot introduce a solution into the development
tree before they have first solved the problem in the stable branch.

This is a serious issue. In my current project, I'm using 1.6.7. I
feel this is prudent. However, 1.6.7 has two showstopper bugs in
resolv.rb which were fixed in the 1.7 branch. I'm reduced to shipping
my software with a version of resolv which I copied from 1.7 and then
hacked to make work with 1.6.

Perhaps there's fame and (virtual) fortune waiting for the person who
steps up and says "I'll drive the support of the 1.<even number>
branch", and who'll fight to ensure that the production releases get
their fair share of developer attention.


Cheers


Dave