Re: Thinking about the next stable release

[David Kastrup]

Jean Abou Samra <jean@abou-samra.fr> writes:

> MacPorts' Guile package is 2.2:
> https://ports.macports.org/port/guile/
> and it doesn't even look like it has Guile 3:
> https://ports.macports.org/search/?q=guile&name=on
>
> I am not under the impression that everyone would
> applaude if we switched to Guile 3.0.

Not as much a matter of "switching" but of "supporting".  It should work
with whatever the distribution reasonably decides to ackage.

> Also, I'm using Guile 3.0 for development (because byte-compilation
> is a lot quicker), and it works ok, but it has a big bad bug:
> it doesn't print source locations when byte-compiling. Last time
> I looked, it seemed easy to fix that, but it is literally impossible
> to get a patch applied. See
> https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2022-05/msg00000.html
>
> Also see
>
> guile$ git shortlog -ns --since="2 months ago"
>      2  Timothy Sample
>      1  Ludovic Courtès
>      1  Mikael Djurfeldt

Well, it's the stable release branch.

> On the other hand, if you look at cross-module inlining
> introduced in Guile 3.0.8
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2022-02/msg00030.html>
> the amount of instability that new Guile 3.0.x versions
> can introduce is just scaring.

But we have on <https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/download/#releases>

    Stable and maintenance releases of Guile have even minor version
    numbers, and can be downloaded from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/:

        The latest release of Guile's 3.0.x series is 3.0.8
        The latest release of Guile's legacy 2.2.x series is 2.2.7

> Given that the development of Guile 3.0 is introducing
> instability and not fixing it, I would be cautious with
> switching to that release series.

We aren't talking about "switching" but "supporting".  It is the
business of the distribution makers to decide which version to ship, and
particularly if they are not thorough users of some software themselves,
they'll tend to select "latest stable" for their latest stable releases.

We want to get out of the "won't ship LilyPond because it requires
legacy versions of Guile which cause a lot of extra work to support"
trap.

> If people assume "works with Guile 3.0.x" and think the latest patch
> release is the best, as is usual, we're in trouble on the day a Guile
> 3.0.x release comes that breaks us.

No, Guile is in trouble then.  I mean, it is in trouble now.  But if
distributors can easily do version-hopping on their own initiative and
end up with one version of Guile they are going to ship for their whole
distro, it would be good if that does not end up in making LilyPond
disappear.  That's all.

What we _recommend_ and use ourselves is an entirely different matter.

-- 
David Kastrup