Head stability [Was Re: [Fwd: Re: [PATCH] Fix Name mangling in HEAD]]

[David Lee]

On 26 Mar 2002, Simo Sorce wrote:

> [...]
> Please Andrew, HEAD is an alpha version, if we do not experiment there
> where shoud we? If I give an option (that was there in the first
> commits) who would have used it?

I'm suddenly getting worried...

I fully appreciate that HEAD is developmental, and so non-production. 
Thus any of us "end-users" who choose to checkout from it do so on a
strictly "own risk" basis, and that we should not put it anywhere near
production.  Fine.

Nevertheless, I had been under the impression, subject to the above
caveats, that HEAD was basically intended to be heading towards stability,
whose innovation aspects would be reasonably tested.  So that, although
there might be temporary glitches, problems and inconsistencies, it would
still be reasonably useable by those of us own-risk, read-only, end-user,
development folk. 

But Simo's comment implies that HEAD may be a place for experiment by the
Samba Team.  Where does "reasonably tested innovation" end, and
"experiment" begin?  I would have thought that "experiment" basically
belongs in a non-HEAD branch or personal sandpit (just as any of us
non-Team folk would do), with HEAD being reserved for stuff that has
already basically had its principles peer-reviewed. 

My own interest?  In the next couple of months we are making major changes
to our local fileserving and authentication services, which will
inexorably push us towards Active-Directory/PAM use of Samba.  So I was
just about to check out HEAD for our local development environment.  If
not HEAD, then where should I go for a stable-ish version of the emerging
ADS/PAM Samba?

Thanks in advance.

-- 

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