Post 5.44 release plans: `defer-next-dev`

We have, at time of writing, 74 issues and PRs labelled
"defer-next-dev". That's a great number larger than during any previous
release. Previously we just bumped through them all after the real
release once `blead` was open again for development work, but I feel
that this time it may require a bit more co=C3=B6rdination to ensure we
don't get too many merge conflicts and allsorts.

I'd like to suggest that this time around, someone (and I volunteer -
as several of the bigger ones are mine ;) ) should take a directing
position at first on all of them. Once we have the release out the door
and are happy to accept new development work again on the 5.45.x cycle,
what I propose to do is an initial triage round of "little fixes" that
won't conflict with each other and knock them all out. On a rough
eyeball I expect that at least half of this pile will merge in entirely
cleanly without impacting any of the others.

Once those are out the door, I expect we'll be in a better position to
start looking at some of the bigger and more interesting ones. Off the
top of my head, I know I have a few that all impact `embed.fnc` and
will require currently-conflicting rebuilds of generated files, but
that shouldn't be much work to actually unpick. I think there will be
quite a few that hit `ext/XS-APItest/APItest.xs` and require some minor
amounts of manual effort to get them together, but overall I'm not
expecting too much trouble. The Dev[ei]l of course is in the details,
and I expect I'll be surprised by something unexpected along the way.

A bit ahead of time (because we're mostly just waiting for RC build
testing now), I'm intending to do a big triage sweep of all of these
PRs, and split them into categories and overall get a feel for what's
where. When I get to that point I'd make a polite request that, once
any of these defer-next-dev PRs has received an OK, please don't make
any nontrivial edits to it, while I work out how all these are going to
fit back together again. If any big changes do need making, I'll ping
the original authors and work out what we need to do.

--=20
Paul "LeoNerd" Evans

[email protected]
http://www.leonerd.org.uk/  |  https://metacpan.org/author/PEVANS