Re: [Mingw-users] Current Mingw installed "current" option

[Keith M. <kei...@us...>]

On Wed, 2007-10-17 at 17:48 -0400, NightStrike wrote:
> I'm sure that works, but why distribute an old version at all?  A
> release is a release, after all...

OTOH, the distinction between a release candidate and a current release
is rather arbitrary, especially in cases such as ours, where there is no
shrink wrapped product.  By definition, *any* release candidate has the
potential become a current release; the transition occurs when the
maintainer decides that no further patches will be applied against the
most recent release candidate, in a particular branch.  For GCC-3.4.5,
that happened when Danny Smith declared that he would do no further work
on that branch, and I relabelled the distribution packages accordingly;
I also invited the maintainer of the installer to sync his package, but
so far that has not happened.

The release of MinGW-5.1.3 predates this promotion of some installable
components from `candidate' to `current', so the .ini file bundled with
the installer is obsolete, and the version to be dynamically downloaded
at installer runtime still needs to be updated.

IIRC, the bundled .ini file is provided as a convenience to users who
are behind a proxy which blocks the dynamic download feature.  However,
I do see your point, that distributing a bundled obsolete version may
lead to confusion.  The problem is that, with different maintainers for
the various packages, it is difficult to keep the installer in sync,
especially when these various maintainers have other demands on their
time; when you rely on voluntary effort, it is hardly reasonable to
expect the volunteers to work to deadlines.

Regards,
Keith.