Friday, January 23, 2009

Next Lazarus release: 0.9.26.2

More than three months (and 1500 revisions) have passed since the latest Lazarus release, so it is time for a new release. Lazarus trunk has now gtk2 as default widget set on Linux and is not yet in a releasable state. Further, gtk2 on newer Linux distros, requires fpc 2.2.4, which has not been released yet. The first release candidate is expected in the coming week(s). So I don't expect the final fpc 2.2.4 release before March. Waiting for fpc 2.2.4 would mean waiting for the next Lazarus release till April or May.

Fortunately, selected revisions from trunk have been merged to the fixes 0.9.26 branch, which actually has become more than just fixes, also 'stable', finished features from 0.9.27 have been merged, such as the use frames and the project icon.

This release can been regarded as an experiment with time based releases. Trunk releases usually have been scheduled to follow a fpc release or some finished feature and bug fixes. The exact timing of such releases was hard to predict. I tried to keep the fixes 0.9.26 branch always in a releasable state, so for example the switch to gtk2 has not been merged, because that depends on a fpc release.

I think the challenge with this release is the testing. The fixes branch is (almost?) not used by the Lazarus developers and I doubt that Lazarus snapshot users use 0.9.26.1 snapshots as much 0.9.27 snapshots. I want to ask you to try these 0.9.26.1 snapshots and report any regressions compared to the 0.9.26 release.

If everything goes well, we have a 0.9.26.2 release next month. Keep an eye on the release plan.