New 1.14 RC date?

[Ben Finney]

Jelmer Vernooij <jelmer at vernstok.nl> writes:

> What's the problem with having a -development format available in a
> release?

As a Bazaar newbie, I encountered strange problems with repository
formats. At that point, I knew nothing about the fact that there even
were multiple formats in existence, let alone the benefits of working
with each.

An off-hand remark from one of the Bazaar developers led to me using a
not-ready-for-release format that was, nevertheless, in the released
Bazaar I was using. I was in need of solutions to try, and was
confident that any code in the release was only there because it had
already survived the testing of those who wanted to test development
versions.

That confidence was betrayed, and I'm still enduring the fallout from
incompatible repository formats. I'm firmly of the opinion that the
divide between release and development is there to stop *exactly* this
kind of leakage: I was not at all willing to be a guinea pig for
development code, and was using the released version precisely so that
I didn't have to be aware of what bits of it should not be used.

To me, the prevention of those kinds of issue is clear: if people
*want* to test a feature still in development, they should explicitly
choose the development code. Code that's not ready for release should
not be in the release *at all*, otherwise the entire point of a
distinction between “released” versus “not yet released” is
undermined.

-- 
 \      “It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh |
  `\                                        at that man.” —Jack Handey |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney