On Thursday 15 August 2002 05:55, you wrote:
> >    - it should be based on a "well-defined" version of Ruby.
> >
> 	>      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.
>
> I vote for this solution :-)
>
> /\ndy
Perhaps, then, the current version of 1.7 should be renamed 1.8, and 1.9, 
development should switch to 1.9, and only fixes be implemented in 1.8.  But 
I'm not volunteering, on the ground of incompetence.  It would need to be 
someone who *could* port the fixes.

The remaining consideration would then be... Is it time to start working 
toward 2.0 (which is what work on 1.9 would be).  Perhaps the current 
developers believe that 1.7 needs more development before it's ready to be 
called 1.8.  I can understand wanting to switch to get the new features of 
the development tree, but that's an "always true".  1.6 is the current stable 
version, and that's why only fixes are made to it, and not the added features 
that are desired.  This is an essential feature of stable branches. (That 
said, 1.7 has been pretty stable for me.  Still, it *is* the development 
branch, so that can't be relied upon.