ROTD thoughts.

[Tyson Dowd]

I'd like to make a few changes to the ROTD (release of the day) 
mechanism, in order to give us a "frequent" unstable release mechanism,
a "common" stable release, and an "infrequent" well-tested numbered release.

Why?  Because we have several collaborators who need frequent releases,
as well as user-developers who need stable releases, and pure users who need
well tested releases.

Presently any bootstrap + full tests passed creates an ROTD and makes it
available for FTP on turiel.  These ROTDs are release candidates --
strictly speaking we could release any of these after going through the
release checklist.  I suggest we keep these on as a "stable" release.

It would be nice to make ROTDs that just pass bootstrap tests
available, but mark them as having failed some tests.  These could
be our "unstable" releases.  Presently these are also created as
tar files, just not put on turiel for FTP.

The current unstable releases are a bit full of junk, because
the tests directory is tarred up with them, but because the tests failed
there are object files and other junk lying around (this ads 2M to the
compressed file size, about 20M uncompressed!).

I suggest we split off the tests directory from the main .tar.gz file
anyway.   So a set of releases at some point in time might look like
this:

mercury-rotd-1998-07-20-extras.tar.gz
mercury-rotd-1998-07-20-tests.tar.gz
mercury-rotd-1998-07-20.tar.gz

mercury-unstable-rotd-1998-08-30-extras.tar.gz
mercury-unstable-rotd-1998-08-30-tests.tar.gz
mercury-unstable-rotd-1998-08-30.tar.gz

mercury-0.8-extras.tar.gz
mercury-0.8-tests.tar.gz
mercury-0.8.tar.gz

Any comments?

-- 
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.     - Benjamin Franklin

Tyson Dowd   <tyson at tyse.net>   http://tyse.net