Re: [Boost-users] [filesystem][xpressive] Hotfix patches available for 1.36.0

Mat Marcus wrote:

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 1:36 PM, Eric Niebler wrote:

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Michael Marcin wrote:

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If the fixes are not critical enough to justify making a point release than they should wait until the next release. So you're against hotfixes. <shrug> I would say, take the hotfix if you are experiencing the problem addressed by the hotfix. Otherwise, wait for the next release.

-- Eric Niebler BoostPro Computing http://www.boostpro.com

For some of us the answer is not <shrug>. Are hotfixes really the way forward? Not to pick on filesystem, threads or xpressive, but hotfixes are a bit difficult to manage in a coporate environment. It's hard enough to get boost accepted/updated without having to defend against people who argue that it's too risky to use boost due to "inadequate quality control" e.g. "boost 1.35.0 didn't work out of the box (windows thread bugs, filesystem compilation errors, etc.), boost 1.36.0 doesn't work out of the box, and there are no dot-releases planned". It really helps if there is a perception of stable, high quality, official, numbered releases.

Sure, corporate environments often prefer to pretend software has no bugs, and thus rarely needs to be updated. I've got one customer who refuses to upgrade a ten+ year old C++ compiler because the vendor has come out with new releases every few years and management views that as a sign of great instability. Sigh. We took a straw-poll at BoostCon. Quarterly Boost releases were clearly the sweet spot for those present. There have been a number of posting to this list recently from folks who would like point releases in between the regular quarterly releases. We aren't going to do that, so making patches available is an experimental alternative. That's a lot more user friendly that asking people who want fixes to fool with Subversion, which may not be familiar to everyone. --Beman