On Wed, May 03, 2000 at 02:49:03PM -0400, Mike Bilow wrote:
> I am going to have my head handed to me for suggesting this, but why not
> move to a three-tier model on a semi-permanent basis, much like we have
> during a period when frozen exists?
Well, the only reason you might get your head handed to you is because...
Hmmm. How can I put this gently?
...well, basically because this is *exactly* what I've been assuming
all along.
The "testing" distribution I keep referring to is intended to act as a
kind of... "chilly" unstable. Not frozen, but cold enough so you won't
burn your fingers when you play with it. If you'll forgive me stretching
the metaphor.
Packages go into unstable as always, and stay there for a cooling off
period (currently set at two weeks) to give people time to check that
they're not dangerous or unusable, and then get moved into the testing
distribution. Presumably, at the appropriate time, we'll change the
requirements on testing so that it freezes rather than merely cools,
and then we'll release it.
> A shorter release cycle would mean that there is less change between
> consecutive versions, barring major upheavals on the order of converting
> from a.out to ELF, which should mean less to break and less to fix.
This simply isn't the case. You'd think it would be, but it just isn't.
Compare the development and freeze times for slink and for potato, eg.
The amount of broken stuff is, or seems to be, almost invariant to how
much actually gets changed. Or, at least, that's what the numbers seem
to indicate to me. The actual numbers. Not hypothetical ones.
On Thu, May 04, 2000 at 08:55:14PM +1200, Mark van Walraven wrote:
> I love the stability of the stable distributions, but a year is just
> too long. Six months would suit me better.
It's probably relevant to note that the time since the last real changes
to slink is closer to 18 months than 12. (The slink freeze was a few
weeks late, then went for four months, then we had 10 months working on
potato, and so far another three months freeze for potato)
But do note that when I'm advocating yealy releases, I'm *also* advocating
(and implementing) daily releases (of a sort) that have many of the
useful properties of official stable releases. If you don't know what
I'm talking about, check the URLs in previous messages in this thread.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG encrypted mail preferred.
``We reject: kings, presidents, and voting.
We believe in: rough consensus and working code.''
-- Dave Clark
Attachment:
pgpbuGXAdBtc8.pgp
Description: PGP signature