Wine Stable (Was: Re: [website] Update Debian downloads info (Resend))

[Kyle Auble]

On 07/24/2015 01:46 AM, Michael Stefaniuc wrote:
> We already have a topic "Wine Stable Considered Harmful" for the
> WineConf in September, see http://wiki.winehq.org/WineConf2015
>
> ...
>
> On a high level view this are IMHO the good and bad things about the
> current stable process in Wine:
>
> Good                            Bad
> ----                            ---
> Code freeze/stabilization       Way too old
> Marketing                       Release slips with features slippage
> Some distributions want it      Distributions insist on using it
>                                  Bug reports for stable are ignored

When you think about it, isn't the idea of a separate, stable release by 
upstream a hold-over from the days before distributed VCS became 
widespread? I mean, a stable release is useful partly because it 
signifies upstream has invested a lot of time in testing and clearing 
out the bugs from existing features, which is still just as important as 
ever. At the same time though, it served an administrative function; if 
you were more involved downstream, how easy was it to stick your own 
patches on top of a moving target upstream without easy merging & rebasing?

It seems like other major projects, e.g. mozilla and the linux kernel, 
switched over to a rapid-release schedule soon after migrating their 
code to a DCVS. Funny enough, if you look back at old issues of WWN, 
even wine converged to the bimonthly release soon after dumping CVS. At 
this point, I figure it's still important to have regular code freezes 
and bug-hunts (perhaps even more often, like semi-annually?) Nowadays 
though, it makes a lot more sense than it once did, to let the distros 
decide which one of those to branch from and make their "stable."

It's an interesting question actually, how the technology effects the 
organization. It should probably be in a new thread, but I imagine there 
are some other procedures the project could revamp to fit the newer tools.

- Kyle