I think this attitude is what will continue to hold Pharo back from wider adoption. I've found 1.4 to be unusable for daily development. And yet there's no interest in fixing problems in 1.3.

There is. But we need to be reasonable... we can not back-port everything. Even fixing bugs changes the system so that it leads to incompatibility and new problems.

And lest you think I don't want to contribute, I'll point you to

http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/detail?id=4549&can=1&q=test%20runner&c...

where I a) submitted a bug report b) included a video demonstrating the bug c) included a patch fixing the bug

Yes, and I only understood the problem last week. Because I use a mouse, and it works with a mouse with right-click... it even works when your track-pad is configured with right click. It only does not work if not.

responses were - "not a showstopper -> move it to 1.4" - "for me the bug entry is not really relevant"

Then complain! There are 450 open reports in the database... we closed nearly 5000 issues. There will be mistakes. The thing is that we could have not released 1.3 until we fixed all bugs.... then we would never have released it. So we go through all reports and decide: what needs to be really really fixed? Yes, we make mistakes. I do not know how to not do mistakes, sorry.

seven months later it finally made its way in.

Because *I* pushed. Ben is using a mouse, so he just did not see the problem. In general, there are just not enough people to look at bugs... if nobody helps, it takes a looong time.

I can see saying, "move it to 1.4" if 1.4 is right around the corner.

We could have blocked the release of 1.3 and then we would have not released 1.3 until now. (keep in mind there are 450 other open issues besides the one you are talking about).

As long as 1.3 is the prime time release - i.e. the release suitable for active development - you have to support it and care about the people using it. This is not some backward compatibility thing. It's a daily usability thing. You can't tell people, "yeah that is fixed, but only in 1.4, but 1.4 isn't really ready for you to use yet." And if I submit a patch for 1.3, then accept the damn patch for 1.3. Don't tell me "it'll go into 1.4" when I can't even use 1.4 myself. That's how you alienate users and keep the community tiny.

We can not backport everything... especially as the amount of people looking at stuff is very small. yes, we should release more often... E.g. since I asked for help on 1.3 issues: http://code.google.com/p/pharo/issues/list?can=2&q=Milestone%3D1.3 There was *no reaction at all*. Nothing. Zero. Sometimes I think we should just stop and do something else. This is clearly not working. Marcus -- Marcus Denker -- http://marcusdenker.de