[Openmcl-devel] ccl 1.11 release and GitHub

[R. Matthew Emerson]

> On Feb 12, 2017, at 3:11 PM, Ron Garret <ron at flownet.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Feb 12, 2017, at 2:43 PM, Chris Hanson <cmhanson at eschatologist.net> wrote:
> 
>> On Feb 12, 2017, at 1:33 PM, R. Matthew Emerson <rme at acm.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Since 1.12 won't be ready for some time, I am considering making a 1.11.1 release, and hosting that on GitHub.  The 1.11.1 release would be binary-compatible with 1.11, but it would contain a few changes (like the version stuff mentioned above) that wouldn't normally go in a release branch.  What do you think?
>> 
>> That all sounds reasonable to me, especially given the switch to GitHub: It would result in a release-quality CCL built and buildable by others from a tag in the (new) primary source repository.
> 
> If that’s your goal (and it’s a good goal) there is an easier way to achieve it: simply tag the old releases.

In the Subversion world, sure, we could tag an old release, and that would include suitable bootstrapping binaries and interface databases.

In the git world, a tag (as I understand it) is essentially a pointer to a particular commit.  It is still necessary to have suitable bootstrapping binaries that will work to compile the sources at that point in time.  As a concrete example of what I mean by this, note that a current development ccl (i.e., 1.12-dev) can't build a ccl from the 1.11 sources.

> I don’t think it’s wise to expend scarce resources to generate a release simply for the sake of generating a release.

I think that GitHub needs to be the official place for "current" ccl, both release and development.  I can't think of a way to avoid making a GitHub release that includes suitable 1.11 branch binaries.