Thanks to everyone who posted or emailed me on this topic, with a number
of suggestions.
> - interim releases ("you asked for this feature, I think this is a good
> implementation of it, try it out, but there may be more to come before
> the next release") are called snapshots as at present
Yes, that's what the snapshots were originally for. I have sort of
tended to drift towards using them for wider things recently. I suspect
that was a bad idea.
As you all know, Exim is currently maintained by a single person (me)[*].
This makes it unusual in that there is just a single source tree which
moves forward, with bug fixes and changes happening together. The latest
source is almost always a "release candidate" because I run my full test
suite at very regular intervals, and update the suite whenever anything
changes.
Without having made a conscious decision, I think the more recent trend
to less frequent releases was partly prompted by the fact that there are
now so many additional packages that bolt on to Exim (RPM's, Debian
releases, exiscan, etc), all of which have to be updated for each
release.
However, I think I should probably retreat a bit, and plan on more
frequent releases, where "frequent" is measured in numbers of items on
the ChangeLog rather than in real time. Perhaps no more than 20 is a
good number to aim for.
Philip
---------------------------------
[*] The question of the longer term was raised with me privately
recently. This thread gives me the opportunity to make a meta-statement.
I am aware that there's a need for some long term planning, especially
as I'm not getting any younger. I'm planning on starting the planning by
writing some kind of discussion paper and calling for comments. I'm
going to be away in Australia for most of January. When I get back seems
like a good time to make a start on this process. Meanwhile, I'll keep
on whittling at the Wish List, and aim for a fully-documented 4.30
release before the end of the year, with some 4.2x releases in between.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
Get the Exim 4 book: http://www.uit.co.uk/exim-book
