On Monday 07 July 2008, maximilian attems wrote:
> > There are valid arguments to be found for staying with 2.6.25 a bit
> > longer, but "D-I has not yet converted to it" is NOT one of them.
>
> testing users are currently on an unsupported kernel.
Eh, how does that follow my last para which I assume you are commenting
on, but which has nothing to do with testing?
A side-note to your comment though...
IMO testing kernel support is the weakest point in the current upload
strategy by the kernel team. By uploading the next upstream release to
unstable basically as soon as it's available upstream, Debian users (both
unstable and testing) are frequently missing out on at least one or two
upstream stable updates for the previous stable ("stable -1") release.
We worked around this for .24 by doing an upstream stable update through
t-p-u.
Upstream does seem to recognize the fact that a new release will need at
least a few updates before it is actually "stable and usable", and will
therefore do at least a few stable updates (for both "new stable"
and "stable -1" in parallel). This basically happens in parallel to the
new merge window (say the time to -rc2) and some upstream releases get
"longer term" upstream stable support (.18, .22, .25).
My personal opinion is that it would be better to delay the upload of new
upstream releases to unstable until the .2 or maybe even .3 upstream
stable update has become available. This would mean a bit more work for
the kernel team, but I would expect that to be solvable.
That would also give more time for initial arch-specific and l-m-e issues
for the new upstream to be worked out (e.g. in experimental) without
breaking unstable too much. IMO a new kernel version should only be
uploaded to unstable if kernel meta packages can be updated at roughly
the same time.
It would also allow to upload a few more stable updates for "stable -1"
and to migrate those to testing, giving testing users on average better
support and it would give D-I some more "breathing space" to do releases.
When a new stable *is* uploaded, D-I should be able to switch faster too
(at least, if there's someone willing to do the initial kernel-wedge
work) as the main criterium for D-I to switch to a new kernel version is:
does the new version look about to be ready to migrate to testing, which
current early uploads of the kernel to unstable effectively never are.
> > A much more important argument is that .25 has seen and will almost
> > certainly continue to get a lot more stabilization effort upstream
> > than is "normal" for upstream kernel releases because long term
> > releases for at least two important other distros are based on it. I
> > doubt .26 will get the same upstream attention.
> > Given the lack of capacity in Debian to do any real stabilization
> > (cherry picking/backporting of fixes from later releases) ourselves,
> > that could IMO be an important consideration for staying with .25 for
> > Lenny.
>
> that doesn't matter a lot, if you look into our 2.6.18 or the RH patch
> biest you'll notice the RH men force boot behind their backporting
> machine.
I'm having serious trouble parsing what you're trying to say here. Could
you rephrase?
Cheers,
FJP
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