Re: Release, bindings (Was: svn commit: r12731 - trunk/notes)

On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 01:36:13PM -0600, kfogel@collab.net wrote:
> Are you saying that it would be difficult to build a source -beta
> tarball followed by a true release tarball, such that the only
> difference between them is the version label? (That's surprising, if
> so.)

I'm of the opinion that if re-cut the tarball you have to start all over
with the tests. You're not controlling for potential mistakes that I
might make cutting the tarball.

If someone else is cutting it without a chroot environment, they might
have changed something in their environment that breaks things. We have
some very specific requirements for software that we need to generate
the tarballs. If they aren't followed it breaks things in obscure ways.

Unfortunately, such is the nature of libtool and autoconf.

> That's an independent proposal, I think. If we want to have 3 or 4
> developers test it, we can do that as easily with beta tarballs as
> with true-but-slightly-secret tarballs. The difference is that we
> can't let the latter kind of tarball out where other people could test
> it too. That seems a pretty large disadvantage...

You're assuming that other people would test it. And that their testing
results would be useful. Having had random people hanging around in the
channels try to test my released tarballs only to run into really odd
problems that are more of an issue of environment than anything wrong
with the tarball.

Heck even sussman is having difficulty trying to test stuff. The more
people testing the better. But we want people that know what they're
doing. We don't want to spend a lot of time figuring out testers
mistakes.

So I'm skeptical of the usefulness of releasing beta tarballs.

-- 
Ben Reser <ben@reser.org>
http://ben.reser.org
"Conscience is the inner voice which warns us somebody may be looking."
- H.L. Mencken
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