stable release 5.0.0

[dvzrv]

What problem will this solve?
When trying to package https://github.com/surge-synthesizer/surge for Arch Linux I realized, that it (also) relies on premake5. However, premake5 has been in alpha since February 2015(!).
Due to our packaging guidelines I'm not able to bring premake5/ premake to the repositories.

This leads me (and other distributions) to either being unable to package software such as surge, or having to introduce hacks, that require a lot more work.

Given the very long time premake has spent in alpha, wouldn't it be possible to tag a stable release?
I can't find any unresolved milestones and am wondering whether there's anything that would block a stable release.

What might be a solution?

git tag -s 5.0.0

What other alternatives have you already considered?
Building a local package of premake and generating the Makefiles required for building surge.
However, this introduces a lot of additional overhead.

Anything else we should know?

[starkos]

I understand your predicament.

@samsinsane and I have discussed this in the past. The problem with declaring a stable release is that we'll then be expected to keep Premake stable, and that just doesn't seem feasible currently. At a minimum, the Gmake/Gmake2 situation needs to be sorted, the Xcode exporter needs to be made fit for use, both Gmake & Xcode need to be made module-friendly, and the toolset abstractions need to be reworked to support more real-world setups. The internal APIs really should be cleaned up and naming conventions standardized for module developers.

It's a big job and I work on it as I can (h/t to our wonderful sponsors, without whom I wouldn't be able to work on it at all). Help is always appreciated!

I'm going to add @samsinsane to this issue and mark it closed for now. @samsinsane—feel free to reopen if you disagree with my summary above, or if your thinking has changed since then. And everyone else feel free to continue discussing here: I'll continue to get notifications and can reopen it if a case can be made.

[starkos]

In case you don't follow @premakeapp, I talked about this a little bit more in the most recent community update. Feedback welcome!