Re: VIM v7 and v7.3.46: End of Life and End of Support Dates needed

[Tony Mechelynck]

On 29/11/12 02:57, rams wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am looking for End of Life and End of Support dates for:
> VIM 7
> VIM 7.3.46
>
> Can you please share the info for this?
>
> Thanks in advance!
>

AFAIK, 7.0 and 7.3.46 are already at EOL. OTOH, if by "Vim 7" you mean
the set of Vim releases starting at 7.0 and extending until but not
including 8.0, then Vim 7 is still supported, even current. Its current
patchlevel is 7.3.743 which was released in source form a few hours ago
("Wed Nov 28 23:03:07 2012 +0100" according to the Mercurial repository).

As long as Vim 7.3.x remains current, you can find an up-to-date list of
its patchlevels (with a one-line description of each of them) at
http://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/7.3/ or
ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/patches/7.3/README

See also http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Getting_the_Vim_source_with_Mercurial

Best regards,
Tony.
--
Go 'way! You're bothering me!

[Gary Johnson]

On 2012-11-28, rams wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am looking for End of Life and End of Support dates for:
> VIM 7
> VIM 7.3.46
>
> Can you please share the info for this?

I am not an official spokesman for Vim. The following is just my
perspective.

I don't know what those terms mean in the context of an open source
project such as Vim. What do those terms mean to you?

In a sense, support for 7.3.46 ended the moment 7.3.47 was released.
Bugs found in 7.3.46 would probably still be fixed, if they still
exist in the latest version of Vim, but the fix would be a patch
to the latest version, not a patch to just 7.3.46.

Support for Vim is usually very good and very prompt, but it's not
guaranteed. Support is given for free by people who contribute
their free time, when it suits them.

Regards,
Gary

[Ben Fritz]

On Wednesday, November 28, 2012 10:11:52 PM UTC-6, Gary Johnson wrote:
> On 2012-11-28, rams wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> >
>
> > I am looking for End of Life and End of Support dates for:
>
> > VIM 7
>
> > VIM 7.3.46
>
> >
>
> > Can you please share the info for this?
>
>
>
> I am not an official spokesman for Vim. The following is just my
>
> perspective.
>
>
>
> I don't know what those terms mean in the context of an open source
>
> project such as Vim. What do those terms mean to you?
>

Some open-source projects (like Python, for example) have a cutting-edge version but also release security updates, etc. for older versions. So you can still download Python 2.7 for example even though they're pushing Python 3.

It would be like having a Vim 7.2 branch that we would back-port crash fixes and data loss issues and the like from the default branch (7.3). But Vim doesn't work this way, and as far as I know, it hasn't ever worked this way. With Vim it seems there is only ever one active line of development.

[Tony Mechelynck]

From time to time, but not at this precise moment, development has
happened on some "future code branch" of Vim, which was then labeled as
either "alpha" or "beta". Important security-and-stability bug fixes
have been, at such times, backported from the "future" release to the
"current stable" release. Nowadays, however, the only code branch
visibly under development is the current stable branch, namely Vim
7.3.x, and all previous branches are at EOL AFAICT. This means that, as
Gary said, currently each new patchlevel obsoletes all previous ones:
the current version is 7.3.744 released some three hours ago as I'm
typing this message. Like Ben said, any bug found in some earlier
release will still be investigated and, if some already published
patchlevel did not fix it, a fix will be attempted, and, if found and
accepted by Bram, published as a new patchlevel, etc.

Someday an alpha or beta pre-release of 7.4 or 8.0 will probably appear,
and then we will again be in the other, "transition" case described at
the beginning of the previous paragraph, until a new "stable" 7.4 or 8.0
release obsoletes the 7.3.x branch.

Best regards,
Tony.
--
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it
were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
-- H. L. Mencken

[Tony Mechelynck]

----------------------------^^^ sorry, "like Gary said".

> release will still be investigated and, if some already published
> patchlevel did not fix it, a fix will be attempted, and, if found and
> accepted by Bram, published as a new patchlevel, etc.
>
> Someday an alpha or beta pre-release of 7.4 or 8.0 will probably appear,
> and then we will again be in the other, "transition" case described at
> the beginning of the previous paragraph, until a new "stable" 7.4 or 8.0
> release obsoletes the 7.3.x branch.
>
> Best regards,
> Tony.
--

The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to
devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation.
-- Lew Mammel, Jr.