[petsc-dev] *unwind* next branch

[Jed Brown]

Lisandro Dalcin <dalcinl at gmail.com> writes:

>> Jed suggests - updates can go into 3.8.1 - if there are 'no
>> incompatible interface changes' [but thats harder for me to verify for
>> non-bugfix changes]
>>
>
> This suggestion truly means that we can ADD public functions and
> #defines to maint ?

Yeah, we've done that occasionally in the past.  I would also say there
should not be any semantic behavioral changes.  We want people to apply
subminor releases without stressing that it could give them different
answers or otherwise invalidate their V&V work.  If we can ship a
performance boost or an important feature without any changes to the
interface or behavior for existing users, I think it's fair game.  Just
need to be very confident that it doesn't change existing semantics,
which can be hard.