From: sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu (Charles Sandmann)
Message-Id: <10111010650.AA14664@clio.rice.edu>
Subject: Win2K/XP status - next steps?
To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com (DJGPP developers)
Date: Thu, 1 Nov 2001 00:50:27 -0600 (CST)
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Reply-To: djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com

As of this evening, around 1200 people have downloaded at least one zip
file of Andrew's product builds with the V2.04 CVS tree.  The most recent
builds still contain the fncase problem - but this has many workarounds
and is relatively minor.  The other known problems are lingering V2.04
CVS library problems that did not exist in V2.03 and are not W2K specific.

All of the critical fixes have been back-patched into V2.03 (a zip with
the updated modules is also available on clio).  This back patch zip hasn't
changed in about a month (14 modules).

So it's time to talk about what we might want to do for release(s).

If we do a release based on 2.03 (refresh or 2.04) it's low risk,
minor changes (to the library) but requires rebuilds of many of 
packages to be useful.  (In reality a few exe's in packages could 
be updated, but this might be haphazard).  

Given the number of people who are using part of Andrew's work, and the
low number of complaints, I think we have effectively done a stealth
beta release of the cvs library and tools based on it.  But I think it's
a required release for a large number of users, and they are effectively
using it in a production mode.  (There is around 100Mb of stuff downloaded
per day).

There are around 250 users who have downloaded the images to patch V2.0x
images and NTVDM to work around the most critical W2K problems - so there
seems to be a mixture of fixes going on out there.

So what's next?  A 2.03 refresh?  Then 2.04 when bugs are worked out? 
Start putting new packages up using 2.04 that don't have the bugs?
Key images refreshed using 2.03 plus patches?