Re: Only m68k and i386 in hamm?
In article <[🔎] ylfjra2gdg96.fsf@law.miami.edu> you wrote:
: Finally, realize that packages-wise, we probably rival RedHat's Alpha
: port---something on the order of 800+ packages are available on the
: Alpha. However, that's *half* of the number available in Debian/i386.
That raises an interesting question, that I've thought about quite a bit...
What constitutes a "port" that is complete enough for distribution?
I personally think that if all of the packages marked as 'standard' or higher
are there and working, it's good enough for me to think we should release it.
That is obviously a far cry from "everything", but my guess is we'll never
have 100% occupancy of all packages on all platforms, even if for such reasons
as MILO only being used on Alpha, LILO on i386, and SILO on Sparc. So, where
is it ok to draw the line?
One of the questions we ask ourselves at my place of daytime employment goes
something like: "At what point is our drive for perfection no longer helping
our customers, but in fact hurting them by causing the stuff we've done that
does work to not be available to the folks who could use it and don't care
about details at the margin?" I think we should ask ourselves that here. In
fact, it's a good question for the 2.0 release process overall.
I'd like to propose that if a non-i386 architecture has a reasonable
installation process and base archive, plus .deb's for all packages marked
as 'standard' or higher in the i386 tree (modulo obvious exceptions like lilo),
that it be considered ready for inclusion in a release.
Thoughts?
Given the current state of the Alpha port, this objective may or may not be
attainable for a 2.0 release. I don't currently have (much) time to help,
though I have put a fair amount of time into the Alpha port personally in
the past. But on the debian-alpha list, I see some flailing since we don't
have a solid definition of what needs to be present for a release to be
considered ready, and without such a goal, it's hard to focus and concentrate
effort on what needs to be done.
Bdale
--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@lists.debian.org
Reply to: