Re: Development/Production versions (was RE: CVS)

[robby <robby@cs.rice.edu>]

At 12:13 PM -0800 2/17/00, see signature wrote:
>
>Projects of the scale of PLT Scheme usually have two lines of
>development: one targeted towards the new features and
>new functuanality, the other being bug fixes to existing released
>versions.

I missed this comment in my last reply, but let me just say that we 
have not needed to do this kind of thing, even though we have made 
many major changes over the years. (version 53 -> version 100 is a 
huge case in point). Perhaps we are more careful than others, or just 
more lucky. Some of it has to do with the fact that we spend half of 
our time studying software construction, and we are careful to think 
through are changes as much as possible. Whatever the reason, we have 
not needed two lines of development.

Also, I think that two lines of development is the ultimate in 
copying code and can be very dangerous (are you _sure_ you carried 
over all of the fixes?), so we have avoided it for that reason as 
well. Copying code is something like the original sin around here.

Robby