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Subject: Re: snapshots: first resort, or last resort?
Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 01:19:35 +0200
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Igor Peshansky wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Linda Walsh wrote:
> >    If it were me, (and I know it's not, thank-you), I'd feel better
> > about getting updated releases into user's hands as soon as reasonable.
> > If I fix something, or change something, I wouldn't want to wait 6
> > months to release it, (ideally,) so if a change I make introduces an
> > untested and unthought-of incompatibility I'm more likely to remember
> > the changes that went into the code.  Five-Six months later, on active
> > code and the changes might as well have been made by someone else and
> > I'm more likely to have to go in "cold" to figure out which change broke
> > things for some isolated user test case. If there have been many
> > changes, it's all the more difficult to find out which change introduced
> > the problem (IMNSHO).
> >
> >    I would take advantage of the "Test" release present in setup to give
> > people time to check things, then rotate it into the "Current" slot, and
> > the older one to "Previous".  I know other people have different working
> > styles, but it helps to understand where they are coming from and their
> > rationale for doing it the way they do it. Linda
>
> What is the difference between installing a "test release" of Cygwin and
> installing a "snapshot" of Cygwin (other than the mechanism by which you
> do it)?  How would it help you if the current snapshot were made available
> as a "release" today?  It would be as (un)stable as the snapshot it was
> packaged from.  The Cygwin developers intentionally do not make snapshots
> installable via setup, because of exactly that mindset: "releases are
> stable, snapshots aren't".  If you got something via setup, you would feel
> you have the right to complain about it if something breaks and demand
> that it be fixed.  If you install a snapshot, well, you were warned.
> You'd still complain (and we want you to), but you'll probably invest more
> effort in tracking down the problem and producing a simple testcase.

Nevertheless I'd like to propose that the cygwin snapshots shouldn't merely be 
called "snapshot" in the future but "stable snapshot". This might help to 
provide the cozy and warm feeling which seems to be so desperately needed.

Regards
  mks

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