[Ironruby-core] Regarding IronRuby... How true it sounds from this blog

[Charles Oliver Nutter]

Peter Bacon Darwin wrote:
> I have not personally been affected by the long time periods between the
> code drops.  I doubt it has had a serious impact on many other contributors.
> Although there have certainly been a few issues highlighted in the mailing
> list around the hosting API and some other internal chunks of code that have
> delayed people trying to work on top of IR - the SaphireSteel guys come to
> mind, I still believe this has not really been a problem, since even in a
> totally open environment, people would need to wait on the core team to
> deliver API's anyway, no?

In general the problem I see most often goes like this:

1. Contributor tries to run IronRuby from RubyForge trunk.
2. Contributor finds a bug.
3. Contributor emails the list, asking if this bug has been fixed, and 
often volunteering to fix it.
4. IronRuby Team Member replies, saying the bug is fixed and will be in 
the next drop.
5. Contributor waits, maybe moving on to other IronRuby work or maybe 
walking away from the project until the next drop.

And this seems to happen again and again. Not only does it slow the 
process of fixing bugs, it makes it impossible for people to want to 
help fix them. If you can never know you're running against the latest 
sources, the process of finding a bug, emailing to see if it's fixed 
already, and probably waiting for that fix to arrive is extremely 
discouraging.

- Charlie