[Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

Sat Oct 2 18:59:55 CEST 2010

On 2 October 2010 14:50, Jérôme Martin <mageia at delaur.net> wrote:
+> Le vendredi 1 octobre 2010, Olivier Méjean a écrit :
+>> Le vendredi 1 octobre 2010 08:51:34, atilla ontas a écrit :
+>
+>> > What's your opinion?
+>>
+>> What about a rolling distribution ? As an user (just plain user) i do not
+>> think that installing a distribution is a goal, just a mean to use my
+>> computer, so i wish i could not spend time installing a distribution every
+>>  6 months or every year.
+>>
+>
+> My opinion is nearly the same: what is the need to provide a new version each
+> 6 months? The marketing point of view is not a valid answer since we do not
+> need to satsify shareholders or follow the market.
+>
+
+Yes, but you have a distro to maintain, a reputation to uphold...
+
+> So when a new version is needed? My point of view is that a new version is
+> needed when a big change will occur for exemple a new major release of KDE or
+> gnome, Xorg, perl, python, jdk, ...
+>
+> We need to change our view. Actually, the date of the release is decide and
+> the deciders (maketting, CEO, CTO, ?) choose which softwares will be include.
+> I propose to look at release date of the main softwares and decide when a new
+> version will be proposed.
+>
+
+Hmm, no, IINM, that would be the release engineers job.
+
+> For smaller software, we do not need to wait for a new version of the distro.
+> Just provide it as we do with the backport repository.
+
+New version => new features + new bugs; anyone who ran cooker for a
+good amount of time have witnessed this fact....
+
+>
+> And no, rolling distro does mean use cauldron, since the system is not
+> supposed to work properly and where critical breakage can appear.
+>
+>
+
+Ah, yes, so you want a rolling release, just like Cauldron will be,
+but that's not broken; now how should one go about guaranteeing that
+this will actually work out OK?
+
+A rolling distro means double work for the devs and packagers as a new
+version may just introduce new bugs too, now they don't provide the
+new versions in a controlled development release where you're warned
+that "this is a development release not suitable for day-to-day
+production machines", or in a "unsupported backports" repo, no, it'll
+just go to the stable release too.....
+
+Now don't only think about a Mageia installation on a personal
+computer, where even if the system is totally hosed you can easily do
+a new install or restore a backup (then update to latest), but you
+also have to bear in mind users who have servers doing all sorts of
+jobs, they want stability over new-shiny-versions; the same goes for
+school/university labs... etc.
+
+-- 
+Ahmad Samir
+