[Distutils] ANNOUNCE: Distutils 0.1.2 released

[Greg Stein]

On Wed, 15 Dec 1999, Greg Ward wrote:
> Phew, just in time for Christmas.  Get your copy today from
> 
>     http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/
> 
> Many bugs fixed in this one.  Works great on Linux and Solaris; I didn't
> hear back from anyone about whether it works on Windows, so I'm taking a
> chance.

<rant>

Who cares whether it is chancy or not?

This is a symptom that I've seen from many people. "Oh! I can't release
yet... it might break." Or another favorite "Here is a pre-release, please
test it and then I'll make a real release."

Screw that. Release a version. If that breaks, then release another. This
whole tentative thing just slows everything down. Holding back releases
doesn't really buy a person anything.

I remember somebody on python-list didn't want to release some code
because they didn't "clean it up" and/or document it. Six months later,
they still hadn't released the code -- meaning nobody got *any* advantage
out of that code. Even if you release crap, then somebody may still be
able to use it. Maybe they can even help you fix it up. But the notion of
"well, I need to do X before sending out a copy" often translates to "I'll
never send out a copy."

</rant>

Cheers,
-g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/