Re: post-release package update policy
Here is another suggestion. I don't think it is neccesary to have a
completely frozen tree. What we should have is both a slow-paced and a
fast-tracked trees.
The slow tree could be called something like "beta", "stable",
"well-tested", or whatever other lie ( :-) ) we come up with. The fast
tree could be called "alpha", "experimental", "please-don't-use-it-yet",
"bleeding-edge" or some other true adjective.
Apart from the joke, I think that files in the "stable" tree should be
almost frozen, but not completely. Two types of packages should still go
into that tree:
1) bug fixes
2) packages which work seamlessly with the rest of the packages in the
"stable" tree and which did not have major bug reports for the last 6
(six) months. (or some other reasonable amount of time)
So this tree would still be a moving target (that's the advantage of the
net as opposed to static media) but upgrades would occur at about every
six months, so people would have plenty of time to download everything.
So, I suggest something like this:
/release-0.93 (or whatever)
admits only bug fixes or packages with a 6 months history of stability
/release-latest -> <latest stable release>
/not-released-0.94
new packages would go here for testing
/experimental -> <latest not-released-x.xx>
As long as most packages are compatible with the latest release there is
no justification to make a new one because no functionality is being
added. Whenever there are enough well-tested feature-adding packages to
justify a new release (a subjective judgement would be needed), the
"not-released-0.94" would become "release-0.94" and a new
"not-released-0.95" would be created.
Finally, the same scheme should be repeated for aout and elf, so we would
really have:
aout/release-0.97 (maybe the last one forever)
aout/release-latest -> aout/release-0.97
aout/release-0.96
aout/release-0.95
... [disk space permitting]
elf/not-released-1.02
elf/experimental -> elf/not-released-1.02
elf/release-1.01
elf/release-latest -> elf/release-1.01
...
elf/release-0.94
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