[LLVMdev] [cfe-dev] LLVM 3.4 Branch Freeze

[Tom Stellard]

On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 04:49:11PM -0600, Hal Finkel wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Tom Stellard" <tom at stellard.net>
> > To: "Óscar Fuentes" <ofv at wanadoo.es>
> > Cc: cfe-dev at cs.uiuc.edu, llvmdev at cs.uiuc.edu
> > Sent: Friday, December 13, 2013 10:24:59 AM
> > Subject: Re: [cfe-dev] [LLVMdev]  LLVM 3.4 Branch Freeze
> > 
> > On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 02:45:51PM +0100, Óscar Fuentes wrote:
> > > Hal Finkel <hfinkel at anl.gov> writes:
> > > 
> > > [snip]
> > > 
> > > > Many of my colleagues say that, with gcc, they wait for
> > > > the x.y.1 release before upgrading because the .0 is too buggy.
> > > > But if
> > > > we're not doing point releases, then I think we need tighter
> > > > standards
> > > > for release. Doing otherwise is not fair to our users.
> > > 
> > > What happened to the LLVM/Clang maintenance release project?
> > > 
> > 
> > We weren't able to make a 3.3.1 release, because we did not have
> > enough
> > testers.
> > 
> > In order to have a successful maintenance release, we need to either:
> > 
> > a) Get commitments from everyone who wants a maintenance release that
> > they will help test the release.
> > 
> > or
> > 
> > b) Have less strict testing requirements for maintenance releases
> > with
> >    the assumption that there is a lot of ongoing testing between .0
> >    and .1
> >    so there are less likely to be bugs left when it is time to
> >    release .1,
> >    and anyone who cares about a maintenance release has had enough
> >    time to file
> >    bugs.
> > 
> > I really think maintenance releases are really important for Open
> > Source
> > projects, because these projects get much more testing after a
> > release than
> > before it.
> > 
> > I would volunteer to maintain a stable branch again after the 3.4
> > release,
> 
> I would certainly also help.
> 
> > but I think we need to solve our release validation issues
> > first.
> 
> To be honest, I don't think this will be a problem in practice. The amount of incremental change is small and there is already ongoing testing of all changes that go into the release (which should all be bug fixes). You may not get as much testing as for the primary release, but I suspect that many of those same people who test the base releases will also try the maintenance releases. Personally, yes, I'd contribute to testing the maintenance releases.
> 

Maybe we can re-visit this after the holidays are over.  I am still
interested in doing bugfix releases for LLVM.

Besides the issue with testers the other thing we need to determine is
whether or not we want to maintain a stable ABI for the bugfix releases.
With 3.3, the plan was to have a stable ABI, but this caused me to
reject several fixes.  I would recommend relaxing this requirement
if there is are bugfix releases for 3.4, but I'd like to hear what other
people think about this.

-Tom

>  -Hal
> 
> > 
> > -Tom
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> 
> -- 
> Hal Finkel
> Assistant Computational Scientist
> Leadership Computing Facility
> Argonne National Laboratory