[Zope-dev] Re: [Zope-Coders] DateTime screwup on 2.6 branch and HEAD

[Casey Duncan]

On Mon, 21 Oct 2002 16:20:19 +0200
"Lennart Regebro" <lennart@torped.se> wrote:

> From: "Toby Dickenson" <tdickenson@geminidataloggers.com>
> > We need to think about a serious overhaul of the release procedure before
> next
> > time round....
> 
> One big problem here is that the beta2 was released "in the middle of a fix"
> so to speak. I had fixed the MailHost date bug making MailHost use
> DateTime.rfc822(). Then beta2 was released, and somebody pointed out that
> there was a bug in rfc822(). That bug was fixed just before the final came
> out, and since I had fixed "half" of #411, I thought I should fix all of it.
> 
> Had I known beta 2 was to be released just the day after I fixed MailHost, I
> would probably have let the 2_6-branch be, since the bugs weren't serious,
> just to make sure serious bugs wouldn't be introduced by mistake. I surely
> would not have added it if I had released that 2.6.0 was just days away.
> 
> So next time I would like a warning before beta2 is released, and I also
> think that the test period for beta2 should be a bit longer than three days.
> I don't think many bugs will be found in that short period.
> 
> Just my 2 cents.

This is in no way a defense of the release tactics for 2.6.0, but these types of changes should be done on their own branch and then merged in atomically to avoid exactly this type of issue. 

In theory (playing by the book) all changes should be made on branches then merged to the HEAD.

-Casey