On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 07:18:56PM +0200, Eric Botcazou wrote:
> > The point of it is that the release branches are actually used by GCC users,
> > many people don't use just official releases, but arbitrary snapshots from
> > the release branches. If a potentially risky patch is applied immediately
> > also to release branches and soon needs follow-ups (happened many times in
> > the recent history), then that results in unnecessary breakage.
>
> IMO that's a rather weak point, if people use arbitrary snapshots then they
> can revert to the previous one; similarly, if they use the SVN tree, then
> they
> can back out the patch manually. You cannot do that for an official release.
Even with official release you can apply a patch, that is not the point.
The point is that many people expect the release branches (and IMHO rightly
so) to be supposedly stable all the time, rather than being seriously
unstable most of the time and only converging to stability around the
official releases. So, if there is something possibly risky, it is better
to give it some time on the trunk rather than breaking everybody and fixing
it a few days afterwards. That doesn't mean you should forget about your
patch and only remember it days before the release of course.
Jakub
