Merging to the release_1_6 branch

[Jordan K. Hubbard]

On May 27, 2008, at 6:28 PM, Rainer Müller wrote:

> What I didn't like about your initial proposal was the "convergence  
> period" which I interpreted to put trunk into code freeze. In my  
> opinion, you should branch off the release if you think the current  
> feature set in trunk would make a good release and stabilize the  
> code on this release branch. Then you roll the release. And that all  
> while work on trunk continues as normal.

Code freezes are more like "code slushes" in trunk and can be done  
without too much disruption.  Also, if the tree is so unready to  
release at a given time that it would require weeks of code freeze to  
stabilize, you simply don't release then.  I have also seen releases  
done by essentially going backwards in time; you figure out that the  
tree was a lot more stable a week ago than today, you check out the  
tree as of one week ago and release that.

I'm not saying that release branches don't have their place - of  
course they do, if you have the manpower to do things that way every  
time and you have a clear idea of what the goals are for each  
release.  For macports, however, it seems like the current goals are  
best expressed as "release when it's usable" and that's fine.  You  
can, however, do that without a branch or someone having to decide  
what goes into it.

- Jordan