new releases [was Re: Official public code repository]

[Roberto Ierusalimschy <roberto@...>]

> Off topic: The latest development version tends to be more stable that
> the latest release version since 5.1.x patches are bug fixes only,
> including some critical ones, so why don't we all use it?  I think the
> reason is that "Lua is never released with any pending bugs."  Since a
> few "known" bugs have no unique patch, it's been eight months without
> a 5.1.3 release.  Should the criteria for release not be whether bugs
> are "known" (knowledge of them says little about their existence) but
> rather whether the development version is certainly more stable than
> the release version?

The Lua-is-never-released-with-any-pending-bugs rule is usually
not a problem, mainly because it is not a hard rule (it is more an
observation). The main reasons for the long times between releases are
(1) we are lazy and (2) we do not think it is a good idea to build a new
release for every bug found, so we wait for more bugs.

That said, we currently do have a small problem for 5.1.3: bug 4
(http://www.lua.org/bugs.html#5.1.2-4). Although it does have a patch
(outlined in its entry), the patch seems to interfere with some
non-canonical uses of Lua (like Lua threads). Although such interference
is not a problem in a new verion, we think that introducing it in a
bug-correction release may not be a good idea...

-- Roberto