Re: Temporal Release Strategy
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:59:52PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
>
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2005 at 10:12:31AM -0400, Patrick A. Ouellette wrote:
> >...
> > The progression I see is:
> >
> > unstable -> testing -> candidate -> stable
> >
> > The existing rules for promotion from unstable to testing continue to be
> > used.
> >
> > Promotion from testing to candidate requires meeting the same rules as
> > promotion from unstable to testing with the following exceptions:
> > packages must be in testing for at least 3 months, and have no release
> > critical bugs.
> >...
>
> One big problem testing has are transitions. This includes library
> transitions, but also other transitions like e.g. an ocaml transition
> affecting several dozen packages currently waiting to enter testing.
>
> Many transitions require a serious amount of manual coordination since
> all packages have to be ready to go into testing _at the same time_.
>
> Please explain how you think any bigger transition can ever enter your
> "candidate" if you add to the testing criteria a "3 months" criteria all
> affected packages have to fulfill at the same time?
>
The system should always be considered a FIFO system. There are only 2
places packages can enter the system: unstable, and security-updates.
The coordination of dependent packages will always require manual
coordination. There is no way around it (unless you completely automate
the build process so it downloads the upstream tar ball and packages it
for Debian - and never breaks). The purpose of unstable is to allow
those problems to be worked out. Once the group of interdependent
packages is ready (managed to live in unstable for 10 days without a
release critical bug) then they will all meet the criteria set to be
promoted to testing. The same thing happens again. Once the entire
group satisfies the conditions, the entire group migrates to candidate.
The point of having the promotion conditions is to make sure the system
is not broken, and can handle library or interdependent package version
changes. The rules I referred to are found here:
http://www.debian.org/devel/testing
If package FOO has a RC bug, then everything that depends on FOO will be
stuck AT WHATEVER POINT IT IS IN THE PROCESS until FOO is fixed. If
fixing FOO breaks BAR, then they all wait again until BAR is fixed. Use
of experimental to work through some of these issues would help.
I'm not saying it won't take manual coordination to handle complex
changes to the system. I'm not saying it will make anyone's life
easier. What my proposal will do is provide the ability to decide when
package $PACKAGE makes it into stable, we will call that an official
release and give it a number. Alternatively, you could declare every
$INTERVAL Debian releases. What is in stable should have been well
tested, and supportable. Stable no longer is a static concept, but a
slowly evolving thing. If you cannot wrap your mind around to accepting
a stable that evolves, we could snapshot stable at release data and make
a separate archive (really a Packages.gz and related files as long as
the version of the package in the release exists in the package pool).
Pat
--
Patrick Ouellette
pat@flying-gecko.net
kb8pym@arrl.net
Amateur Radio: KB8PYM
Reply to: