more releases

[Alex Rozenshteyn]

I have the impression (no data to back it up, though) that no small number
of users download bindists (because most OS packages are out of date:
Debian Unstable is still on 7.8.4, as is Ubuntu Wily; Arch is on 7.10.1).

On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 12:04 PM, Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:

> Richard Eisenberg <eir at cis.upenn.edu> writes:
>
> > I think some of my idea was misunderstood here: my goal was to have
> > quick releases only from the stable branch. The goal would not be to
> > release the new and shiny, but instead to get bugfixes out to users
> > quicker. The new and shiny (master) would remain as it is now. In
> > other words: more users would be affected by this change than just the
> > vanguard.
> >
> I see. This is something we could certainly do.
>
> It would require, however, that we be more pro-active about
> continuing to merge things to the stable branch after the release.
> Currently the stable branch is essentially in the same state that it was
> in for the 7.10.2 release. I've left it this way as it takes time and
> care to cherry-pick patches to stable. Thusfar my poilcy has been to
> perform this work lazily until it's clear that we will do
> another stable release as otherwise the effort may well be wasted.
>
> So, even if the steps of building, testing, and uploading the release
> are streamlined more frequent releases are still far from free. Whether
> it's a worthwhile cost I don't know.
>
> This is a difficult question to answer without knowing more about how
> typical users actually acquire GHC. For instance, this effort would
> have minimal impact on users who get their compiler through their
> distribution's package manager. On the other hand, if most users
> download GHC bindists directly from the GHC download page, then perhaps
> this would be effort well-spent.
>
> Cheers,
>
> - Ben
>
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