It seems to me that both questions are sensible ones:
1. What should GHC’s release cadence be? For example, would annual be better than semi-annual? Herbert and Michael both think so, and they know a thing or two. I’d love to hear from more people on this question.
1. When we do make a release, whenever that is, how we can work most productively with library authors, so that the release comes out in a timely way? This was Ben’s original question, and it applies regardless of cadence.
Simon
From: Ghc-devops-group
Naturally, delays like this make it hard for GHC to maintain its faster release cycle ... How do you think we might speed up this process?
IMO You're asking the wrong question. This seems based on a premise that everyone agreed with a faster release cycle... to me the downsides on the ecosystem and infrastructure of a faster release churn significantly outweight the modest benefit some people might perceive; and the issue's we've been observing (not only boot libraries, but also the 10k packages on Hackage) with the overspeeded release cycle are IMO a sign that we're moving faster than the ecosystem can accommodate. Just because GHC HQ managed to optimize their release processes (and I have to say, at the expense of the release quality -- GHC 8.6.5 was the first major release since GHC's beginning to require five attempts -- and I have to note that this results in annoying busy work for GHC packagers like myself) doesn't mean that everyone else has the time and energy to adapt to this new order as well. +1