Re: Bits from the Release Team - Kicking off Wheezy
On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 11:39:47PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> On 01/05/11 at 22:48 +0200, Pierre Habouzit wrote:
> > On Sun, May 01, 2011 at 10:36:07PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > > It's clear that we are not going to stop doing stable releases anytime
> > > soon. However, there seem to be some interest in the "rolling release"
> > > concept. The question is: can we (Debian) provide a rolling release
> > > with an acceptable increase in workload, and without compromizing the
> > > quality of our stable releases ? If yes, why shouldn't we do it?
> >
> > Well, if you hadn't guess, I think it will increase workload
>
> I agree. The question is: will the increase of workload be worth it?
>
> > and worse divert attention from what I think is a more important goal.
>
> Your point is basically "we should discourage developers to do something
> else than working on getting the next stable release out". I don't buy
> it. I'm sure that we are all very good at procrastinating the things
> that we don't want to do, whether the "excuses" are provided by Debian
> or by other projects/hobbies.
>
> Developers who are not interested in helping with the release will just
> do something else. We can send a clear message to developers that
> getting the stable release out should be considered more important than
> working on rolling or on one's other pet projects, but besides that, I
> don't think that there's much more to do.
No I say we're already not that good for Stable releases, why would we
chose to be even worse. Would releasing be just a breeze my discourse
would be very different.
I think we're not that good at releasing that we can sustain rolling. 6
months of freeze is just too long.
> > But really what I'd like to see is numbers and compelling reasons to
> > start all that CUT/rolling thing, because that's missing completely from
> > the thread, I'm still not understanding why we need anything like that.
> > You don't do something like that because it's hype, you do it because
> > it's badly needed, and well, why?
>
> There's a clear user demand for rolling releases. For evidence, one can
> look at the usage of Debian testing or unstable which clearly goes
> further than the DD community. Or at the quickly growing market share of
> ArchLinux. Or at the interest in LinuxMint and Aptosid.
>
> Personally, I'm surrounded by [advanced] Ubuntu users who would be
> interested in something *slightly* harder to use, with more recent
> software.
>
> I think that Debian is in a perfect position to provide a rolling
> release with marginal additional work, since we already have testing to
> build on.
>
> Benefits for Debian:
> - attract users who think that testing is only a development branch, and
> want newer software than what one finds in stable. Those users are
> likely to be rather advanced users (developers, free software
> contributors), thus interesting to work with. Some of them could
> become Debian contributors. And even if they don't, more users of
> testing/rolling means more testers of the next stable release
> [remember how the bug reporting rate of Ubuntu is higher than
> Debian's -- some areas of Debian could use more testers].
I think those can use unstable, and if they use rolling, I think I
already "proved" or at least explained why those don't contribute to the
stable in being, but rather the N+1 one. Which is probably not bad, but
not the most urgent thing.
> - give back to the free software world by providing a platform where new
> upstream releases would quickly be available to users. Since users
> would be able to test new upstream releases earlier, they would be
> able to provide feedback to upstream devs earlier, contributing to a
> shorter feedback loop.
Why doesn't unstable fit that?
> - get back some attention that is currently taken away from Debian by
> derivatives. This is important to carry our /political/ messages,
> which are not necessarily carried out by our derivatives.
*I* (but that's personal) don't care about that. I don't find that a
compelling argument.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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