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Date:      Mon, 24 Mar 1997 09:31:22 -0800
From:      "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
To:        Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
Cc:        dg@root.com, mishania@demos.su, chat@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 2.2.1 - rumours? 
Message-ID:  <27971.859224682@time.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 24 Mar 1997 22:10:19 %2B1030." <199703241140.WAA06862@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> 

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> David Greenman stands accused of saying:
> > >But this is frightening ;-( Reminds Mr. Torvalds speed. I have to repeat, 
-
> > >I mean no offence, since well, I personally think Mr. Torvalds production
> > >is quite different opposite we have here.
> > 
> >    You don't need to be concerned about this becoming a regular thing. It
> > takes a lot of effort to make full releases, so we only do it when we feel
> > it's critically necessary.
> 
> ... and what you've politely omitted to mention is that it's not for lack
> of effort on the part of the people making the release, but rather that
> nobody, it seems, has had the _courage_ or _inclination_ to test 2.2, 
> all of you rather waiting until it was released.

Thank you for saying this.  In fact, this has been noted so often that
I jokingly suggested that we should do a "fake" 2.2R release about a
week before the real one was due so that people would actually test
it.  They don't test the BETAs or the GAMMAS very well, it seems,
since I get the bulk of my bug reports from the final releases.  It's
almost enough to make one ditch the whole ALPHA/BETA/GAMMA release
cycles, they've become that ineffective as a genuinely useful test
vehicle for us.

On the flip side of this, we have more and more people who seem to
expect every single bug fix to be in every single release.  I got tens
of letters from people saying "are the bug fixes in 2.1.7.1 also in
2.2R?  Please say yes!" even though the timing for that to happen
would have been an impossibility. Doesn't matter, they want the fixes
anyway - they want working time travel, in fact, so that the bugs are
also fixed on all their 2.1.0 machines. :-)

Even now, I'm now getting messages saying "you get Justin's fixes in
from Sunday and Monday?  Right?  Right?!" to which I must respond "no,
I did not - I did the release on Saturday so that I could have Sunday
to test it - the fixes would have had to have been in on Friday since
I need at least 2-3 days to put a release together and test it."

So the answer is - if people like Mishania want to see less frequent
release then they're going to have to work A WHOLE LOT HARDER on
the BETAs and the GAMMAs!  We had GAMMA out for a month and hardly
anyone tested it.  Maybe if I only gave people an hour before removing
the bits again, they'd be more motivated, but giving them plenty
of time does NOT appear to work at all. :-)

					Jordan




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