Re: GDB 5.2 et.al. release schedule

[Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@mvista.com>]

On Wed, Jan 23, 2002 at 03:52:26PM -0500, Andrew Cagney wrote:
> See also: http://gcc.gnu.org/develop.html
> 
> There have been plenty of concerns raised about the unreliability of the 
> GDB release cycle: 12 months, 18 months, ... I'm looking for more robust 
> ways of addressing this.  (btw the 5.2 release manager role is still 
> available) (I promise not to break an arm again :-).
> 
> In previous e-mail I've mentioned the intention to branch 5.2 mid Feb 
> and release it mid March.
> 
> With those two points in mind, and looking across at GCC for idea's, I'd 
> like to propose that GDB have a more formal release schedule.
> 
> I should note that GDB 5.1 established a new precident - it was released 
> with several targets (HP/UX, ALPHA) known to be broken.  Being willing 
> to do this greatly simplified the task of the release person as they 
> should no longer feel guilty when documenting that certain 
> targets/natives just don't work.
> 
> GCC's cycle is every 6 months.  GDB could go for 12, 6, 4, or 3 months. 
>  In the below I've somewhat arbitrarially chosen 4 months.  That would 
> give three major and (possibly) three minor releases a year.

I like it.  And I agree with your comments about the iterative
development process.

> Looking at other release cycles, a 6 month schedule would better tie in 
> with GCC.  While I'm open to opinion, my gut feeing is that the GCC 
> release schedule/model really don't map well onto GDB.  GDB is far more 
> of an iterative development model and as such should encourage more 
> frequent releases.

And we don't need to be tied to GCC.

> PS: If this is agreed to, I'll add it to cron so that no one can forget :-)

The possibilities are alarming...

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz                           Carnegie Mellon University
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer