[Mageia-dev] Release cycles proposals, and discussion

Mon Jun 13 12:40:39 CEST 2011

Le lundi 13 juin 2011 à 03:07 -0700, Ron a écrit :
+> I made another post in a different thread about the way I feel the release cycle should go. After more thinking
+>  I do think that I really have the right idea and here is why...
+> Going the route of release cycles really does not make this distribution fit into anything. You going to try 
+> and appeal to new people? Ubuntu has that covered and you will never steal that role. Hoping to become a geek type 
+> distro? There are many that have that covered. 
+>
+> The best thing you can do as a team is try to come up with something that makes you stand apart from the crowd.
+
+There is a limited set of options, and as you can see, none of your idea
+was not already explored by someone else.
+
+>  I never understood the release cycle model anyhow, whats the goal of that? 
+
+If everything move all days, you cannot :
+- translate software ( as the string will change every day )
+- create documentation ( for the same reason )
+- communicate ( as everything ca be broken at any time )
+- ensure stability ( as each change can bring unstability )
+
+And for user, some do not want to redo training every week for their
+users, because libreoffice got updated, because ff 4 just arrived and
+75% of extensions do not work, etc. 
+
+In fact, the whole release model is basically what is used all over the
+place, from lower level like kernel to higher level like kde. So you can
+get lots of feedback on it.
+
+> To show off the latest tech in the open source world? Really? With Slackware and Fedora and 
+> Suse and hosts of other flavors of GNU/Linux all doing the same thing?
+
+So basically, you suggest that since everybody is already doing it, this
+is useless. So the logical conclusion is we should drop the
+distribution ?
+
+> What do we have that others don't? 
+
+We have the same thing, this is the strength of free software. We
+basically all work together.
+
+
+> We have something new that can be great 
+> if planned right. There are 100's of distros releasing in cycles, let's get 
+> out of that and truly showcase the best of open source through:
+> Unstable branch - absolute latest software here...
+
+like cauldron ? or debian unstable, fedora rawhide, opensuse factory,
+mandriva cooker ?
+
+> Rolling unstable - Still risky but not on the lines of unstable
+
+like debian testing ( and CUT ) ? suse tumbleweed ? arch linux ?
+
+
+> Rolling stable - everyday use and very stable 
+
+Very stable for a distribution mean "that do not change". That's
+incompatible with the idea of rolling per definition. And in order to
+have stable software, you have to freeze them and fix bugs. So to have
+that on the whole distribution, you need to freeze the whole
+distribution for a time, and then ask for test, fix bugs and then
+release. Which is exactly what we currently do since years. 
+
+> You could throw in "snapshots" and support those for X amount of time 
+> as I have posted in the other place if you wanted (based on rolling unstable). 
+> You could also have LTS releases based on Rolling stable.... It's up to you.
+> I don't believe we need yet another "burn new disk every X months for????" distribution. 
+
+So basically, you just reinvented the concept of release, and the way
+Mandriva, Debian, Fedora work since years. 
+
+-- 
+Michael Scherer
+
+