Sebastian Lackner sebastian@fds-team.de writes:
So, what kind of patches are acceptable during the freeze period? If we are too strict, basically only minor cleanup is possible. I still have various patches I would like to send (x86_64 marshalling, ...), but a small risk of regressions is always there.
Acceptable patches are the ones where the risk of adding a regression is considered smaller than the benefit that the patch provides. That's a subjective judgment based on past experience, so there's no hard and fast rule. But if the patch is more than a few lines, or touches an area that's known to be prone to regressions, it's not likely to go in.
I'm also willing to be convinced, so if you can explain why you think that the patch is safe, or why you think the benefits are big enough, that helps. But of course, because it's subjective, there will always be cases where we have to agree to disagree.
Code freeze is not about achieving perfection, it's about best effort. Even if a patch doesn't get into 1.8, the important thing is that we have taken the time to develop a fix. If that fix turns out to be too risky, that's not the end of the world, it will go into the development branch, and if it turns out that it was safe after all, it can then be backported to 1.8.x.