Re: stable snapshots...

Tom Lane wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
>> Marc G. Fournier wrote:
>>> Not sure about the usefulness of the extra stable tarballs ... doesn't
>>> most of the back patching happen just as we are about to release the new
>>> versions?
>
>> Not sure where you got that idea. There are plenty of times when
>> somebody (mostly Tom) commits a bugfix and tells the reporter, stating
>> that the release date of the new version is some undetermined point in
>> the future. Not everyone is able to grab the patch from CVS and apply
>> it; my guess is that most people simply wait for the next stable
>> release. Those people would benefit from having the older stable
>> branches, so here's a +1 to Stefan's idea.
>
> Yeah. When we have fixed a bug but not yet released an official version
> with the fix, somebody who needs that bug fix has three choices:
> * manually apply the patch to a recent tarball;
> * pull from CVS;
> * use a nightly snapshot.
> The first two cases require having extra tools like appropriate bison
> and flex versions (which right now is looking like a bigger deal than
> I would wish :-().

yeah this is exactly what caused me to notice the original problem -
somebody had an issue with 8.4.0 that is fixed in the stable branch
already (the pl/perl locale issue) but was unable to use CVS and/or git
for pulling the code down.
We also should look into making this more automatic or at least document
on the (www-) release TODO list.

> If we can build nightly snapshots for a release or two back without
> undue effort, I think it'd be a useful service.

yeah - having say the last two or three releases available that way
seems like a good thing to do.

Stefan