[LLVMdev] RFC: Bug fix releases for 3.3 and beyond

[Tom Stellard]

On Wed, Apr 03, 2013 at 02:08:42PM -0500, Krzysztof Parzyszek wrote:
> On 4/2/2013 11:51 AM, Tom Stellard wrote:
> >
> >I would really like to see the LLVM project start to make official bug fix
> >releases (e.g. 3.3.1, 3.3.2, etc.).  I think that this would be useful for a
> >lot of the users of LLVM, especially projects that use LLVM as a library.
> 
> Does this really make sense with a 6 month release cycle for the
> main releases?  Who are the customers who would be able to request a
> dot release?

I don't think the length of the release cycle really matters too much.
The main point of having dot releases is so that projects that depend on
LLVM can ship their own stable releases that are based on a stable
version of LLVM.

As it stands now projects either have to use a released version of LLVM
and just accept whatever bugs come with it or they need to go back and
update their own stable versions (which makes them not so stable)
each time there is a new LLVM release.

> Each additional bugfix release carries a significant cost.  Who is
> going to be investigating bugs in prior releases, especially if the
> problem can no longer be reproduced with the development branch?
>

If someone cares enough about a bug, then they should be willing to spend
the time investigating it.

-Tom
 
> -Krzysztof
> 
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