Re: Feature: use Posix ACL for FPM socket

On 30/11/2014 18:06, Remi Collet wrote:

However, I think we should stop including features in our patch releases. I've heard a few others express similar sentiment, but it may have been more targeted at what we are allowing for "bug fixes" in patch releases. Anyway, that's my input. Yes, I'm one wanting to reduce new feature in stable branch... This is the reason why I propose this feature for 5.6 (not 5.5) and with a new option to not change default build.

But that's still technically introducing a feature in a patch release. From a documentation point of view, it's a lot tidier if we only ever have to say "since PHP x.y" rather than "since x.y.z", and as you say, there's always a risk. I don't know much about this case, but let's say a mistake allowed a misconfigured build to apply an inadvertently wide ACL; having that emerge in a patch release could mean downstream maintainers losing faith in the official releases, and make everyone's lives harder. Part of the stated aim of the release process RFC [1] was to "reduce the time to get new features in a release", and the solution to that was to guarantee a release every year, so that there's never more than a few months to wait, while simultaneously having clean, safe, patch builds. The crucial paragraph is this:

No feature addition after final x.y.0 release (or x.0.0). Self contained features or new SAPIs could be carefully considered on a case by case basis.

That wording implies - in my opinion - that the burden of argument should be on the feature's sponsor for why an exception should be made, but there's a temptation to shoot for inclusion everywhere and see if the RM challenges it. [1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/releaseprocess -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]