Partial freeze?
Ok,
Here is another thought (probably one that has come up before - gotta love
going around in circles. Let me know if I am).
The problem at the moment is that no-one wants to freeze, because we don't
know how long we will be frozen for - and in that time things get stale and
old. And why don't we know how long we will be frozen for? Because some
"critical to release" packages (like boot-floppies) are not stable and we don't
know how long they will take to become so.
However - IMHO if we don't freeze, then we are in the same position as
unstable always is - at any point there can be an update that will cause a
different "critical to release" package to fail. Who knows - in a month when
we have boot-floppies working, some other new or updated package might (or
new policy) might still prevent us from freezing for the same reasons..
Bit of a catch 22 really. If we freeze, then things can stabilise, but they
might also get stale. If we don't, then things won't get stale, but they may
not stabilise quickly.
How about this then: We identify those packages which are considered
"critical to release". This would include packages like boot-floppies and
policy. Then we declare a _freeze on those packages_. The same freeze rules
apply - only bug fixes to these packages allowed.
However, new uploads can continue while this stuff stabilises - as long as
they don't cause problems with the "critical to release" packages. If they
do, then the freeze rules apply to that upload (no new code).
Eventually we freeze the whole distribution for a very short time to clean
release critical bugs in non-core packages. We should take a fairly hard line
on these, and basically say that if there was a version without _new code_
that didn't exhibit the problem, we backdate to it rather than bugfix.
Ok..conclusions from this idea... This _may_ lengthen the freeze time, since
we are effectively doing 2 freezes. But the second phase (the phase that can
introduce stagnation) will be much shorter than it is in our current situation.
Another conclusion may be that this just sounds like common sence, and there
is no need to make it official...but I've always found these things work much
better when they are enforced.
The last remaining question is how workable this concept is....
Best regards,
Chris
(wish me well for my macroeconomics exam in...oh...1 1/2 hours :)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Linux, because I'd like to *get there* today
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Reply with subject 'request key' for GPG public key. KeyID 0xB4E24219
Reply to: