On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 9:27 PM, Austin English austinenglish@gmail.com wrote:
Even without any new features, it seems to me that passing all tests on all platforms might all on its own merit a new stable release.
By 'all platforms', do you mean all Windows versions, or Linux/OS X/BSD/Solaris?
I meant Windows.
But now that you ask, we do have a lot of platforms to consider. We simply can't provide the same level of support for them all. The gcc project defines three tiers of support. If we did that, it might look like this: We would define tiers for Windows conformance test validation, CPUs, and host operating systems, and maybe graphics cards. 1st tier: we run tests regularly, and all tests must pass for release. 2nd tier: we might run tests occasionally or regularly, but we will tolerate some failures. 3rd tier: we won't test ourselves, and will tolerate failures, but will accept bugfixes from advocates.
Here's one possible set of definitions:
For Windows conformance test validation: 1st tier: Win XP 32 bit, Win 2003 32 bit, Win Vista 32 and 64 bit, Win 2008 32 bit 2nd tier: Win XP 16 bit, Win 95, Win 98, Win ME, Win 7 32 and 64 bit 3rd tier: Win 3.1, DOS
For CPUs: 1st tier: whatever our developers use, but mostly < 2 year old Intel and AMD chips, running apps in all three modes, 16, 32, and 64 bit (as supported by hw) 2nd tier: none 3rd tier: power pc, sparc, other less-common pentium-compatible chips
For host OS: 1st tier: Linux 2nd tier: Mac OS X 3rd tier: Solaris, FreeBSD
For graphics cards: 1st tier: Nvidia 8400 or higher 2nd tier: < 4 year old Nvidia, < 2 year old ATI, < 2 year old Intel 3rd tier: older nvidia
I'm sure that will need adjusting, but it's a good starting point for discussion. - Dan