Any opinions about whether it's too late to do this in v17? Post-beta3 is pretty late, for sure, but maybe we could get away with it. And we are fixing a bug here.
If this isn't going to appear in the beta3 build I'd say it's probably too late given the target audience for waiting on this is extension authors. If it is going into beta3 then I'd vote to allow it.
Feels like this dynamic should be covered as part of our recent attempt to better communicate our policies to our extension authoring community.
Namely, beta releases do not constitute a minor release under our policies and updates to our API/ABIs can happen during beta at any point - whether for features newly added in the under- development major version or not. Extension authors are thus encouraged to test their extensions against the RC build at minimum should they wish for their extension to be ready when the initial release comes out. Tests against beta versions are very helpful to all interested parties but there is no guarantee that tests that pass any given beta release will pass when performed against the release candidate. For the release candidate we will use the same patching policy as for a normal minor release. Any exceptions will necessitate a second release candidate.
The above wording allows us to put this patch into beta3, which I'd be fine with. But I'd also be fine with adding wording like: "Changes introduced after the final beta is released for testing will [generally?] be limited to fixing items conforming to the Open Item policy." Probably favor the latter too by a small margin.
