Re: branching stable/2.22?

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

On Sun, Aug 23, 2020 at 1:58 PM Jonas Hahnfeld <hahnjo@hahnjo.de> wrote:
> I'd like to ask what it would take in principle to branch stable/2.22
> and what others think about this.
>
> Personally I'm convinced that creating the branch and only picking bug
> fixes from master is the only guaranteed way to stabilize. Now you
> might say that there were only few unstable releases (AFAICT there was
> 2.19.65 before branching stable/2.20). However, I think there are
> already quite some user-facing changes and also the switch to Python 3.
> With Python 2.x being EOL since January, it's only a matter of time
> until Linux distributions and BSDs want to drop that, and it would be
> unfortunate if that put a (temporary) end to providing LilyPond for
> their users. If we had release candidates or even a stable version
> until then, it would definitely help.
> The same can of course happen with Guile, but that situation has been
> going on for years. Furthermore, it's at least possible to compile and
> use current master with Guile 2.x, even if slower. In my understanding,
> things are getting better but properly integrating byte compilation is
> still a good amount of work that nobody could give a deadline on.
>
> WDYT?

I think that both Python 3 support and usable (if imperfect) GUILE 2
support is a strong argument for releasing a new stable version soon.

I've been working on the build system (obviously), with in the back of
my mind having a build that is no longer recursive, but that work
could be paused for a bit while we prepare for releasing a 2.22.

Is there a list of problems in the current master that have to be resolved?

We could also consider a freeze for some time period (eg. 1-2 months),
to allow the master branch to stabilize, before we cut 2.22.

--
Han-Wen Nienhuys - hanwenn@gmail.com - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen