[Bitcoin-development] 0.4.x stable branch

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 8:49 AM, Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen at gmail.com> wrote:
> My initial reaction is no. Testing and bug-fixing is the bottleneck
> for making core bitcoin better, and maintaining two release lines
> won't make that better.
>
> I also think that until we get to a "1.0" that we can all agree is
> ready for everybody AND their grandma to use, using the word "stable"
> would be dishonest.

I think the primary concern that they are attempting to address there
is providing a stable base bitcoind for miners, banks, and webservices
to apply their patches on top of.

Right now, if they want to keep up with development they are stuck
forward porting against often disruptive changes as just about
everyone running something of importance needs some patch or another
so you have people who are clearly in the know like Luke and tcatm
trailing development on some of their systems by many months.

This isn't healthy for the network.

I'm not convinced a bugfixes only branch will help much: Even bug fixes
will disrupt local fixes, and testing and supervising your upgrade usually
takes more effort than the forward porting.

I'd rather see more effort put into mainlining the changes people are
carrying sooner and restructuring code to better accommodate patches
which aren't suitable for mainline.  This will also encourage people
to make the fixes they're running publicly available, rather than
just keeping them private for competitive advantage.