Re: Debian rolling: tentative summary
On Monday, May 02, 2011 07:31:31 AM Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
...
> How we deal with freezes is the hard point in this discussion. I'm
> personnally in favor of the "freeze rolling for 3 months, then fork
> frozen and unfreeze rolling" plan, though it has some problems too
> (it is not clear whether the required manpower really decreases at
> the end of freezes).
...
There is a ton of complexity hidden under these simple words. There is also
(that I can immediately think of):
- How do we provide a reliable path for fixes to Testing once Unstable/Rolling
have moved on?
- How do we stitch Testing/Rolling back together after a release into the new
Rolling?
- How do we allow for more parallel transitions so that rolling can actually
roll.
The first two points have gotten a lot of discussion. The third one, not so
much.
The Debian archive has gotten large enough with enough non-trivial
intersections between groups of packages that transitions of almost any size
need coordination and analysis to find an appropriate time to land in order to
minimize deadlocks in Unstable -> Testing (or whatever you call it)
transitions.
If you view this exercise as primarily a PR move to make Testing seem more
attractive to users that want a rolling distribution, then I suggest we
arrange things so it can actually roll.
As an example, my desktop environment of choice (KDE) is still a year (and two
major releases) out of date in Debian Unstable/Testing. Current packages
exist in Experimental, but can't get to Unstable let alone some theoretical
Rolling because there's no transition window.
I don't think that someone who is attracted to the idea of a Rolling release
to get the latest and greatest would find this met their expectations.
Without solving the problem of the need to serialize transitions, I doubt
Rolling will match the expectations such a change would engender and while
there would no doubt be publicity, I'm skeptical it would be the good kind.
Scott K
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