Re: cc can't build 32-bit executables on amd64

On Mon, May 01, 2006 at 11:04:32PM -0600, Scott Long wrote:
> While it's always unfortunate and undesirable to have bugs in releases
> or have missing features, it's even more undesirable to hold releases
> indefinitely until "all the problems are solved".

Even the most cursory review of GNATS will reveal that there are bugs in
every release.  Even if we were a professional, rather than almost-all-
volunteer, organization, this would _still_ be true.  This is true of
all software, not just FreeBSD.  (I will not mention the name of any
Major Operating System/Applications Vendors here).

The tradeoff is _always_ "which bugs affect the most people".  If we
waited for all the problems to be solved, we would have releases very
rarely.  This was tried in the 5.X cycle and really didn't work very
well :-)

So it's a question of where you make the tradeoffs.  From at least one
perspective (ports, could you have guessed? :-) ), the release has already
been fairly drawn-out as it is.

I'll echo what Scott said about preparing for these things early, so that
everyone can try to prioritize which bugs most need to be addressed.

mcl