Re: Unreleased fixes in master

[Ethan A M. <sf...@us...>]

On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 10:50:46 AM PST Dima Kogan wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'm using the 5.2.6 release, and I just hit a gnuplot bug that we
> already fixed back in 2017/11:
> 
>   https://sourceforge.net/p/gnuplot/mailman/gnuplot-beta/thread/2603217.PItpvUgmjs%40stonelion/#msg36096047
> 
> It looks like this fix is in place in the master branch, but not in the
> latest release. Is this intentional? Can we release it?

That's a tough call.  I see somewhere on the order of 20-30 commits over
a period of 8 months that are related to that change, touching core files
as well as individual terminal drivers.  That is far more extensive than
I ever used to consider for back-porting from the development version to
the stable source.

I realize that now we are using git, for better or worse.   That probably
makes it more feasible than previously to back-port a large set of changes,
if only because it is easier to back them out again if things break.

But is it a reasonable use of effort?  At some point I think you just have
to say "yeah, there are lot of nice new features and improvements in the
development version that won't appear in an official release until the next
major version (5.4)". 

Anyhow, I guess the answer is "maybe".

			Ethan