Re: Debian 2.2 Release.
> On Wed, Jun 28, 2000 at 08:08:27AM +1000, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> > Now read my post. A heavily developed package with its own
> > release cycle is never going to be up to date in our stable
> > release, for various reasons.
>
> There is NO such reason.
>
> If they say they have new STABLE, we should put it into
> both frozen and unstable as soon as debian/* works.
> And if they support debian/* we should put it
> into archives even in day when they announced stable.
Frozen is for working out integration issues, not adding new
functionality. A new version is suitable for unstable, but not frozen.
I remember one Debian release (buzz?) that did what you suggested --
allowed "stable" major upstream releases into frozen -- we didn't want
to release a release without the newest X release, or kernel 2.2, or
Perl 5, or... And yes, I believe all three of those hit Debian while we
were "frozen". And they weren't polite to hit all at once.
Debian didn't get released for a -long- time. Each of those
last-minute updates into frozen caused other packages to break, which
had to be fixed, and tested, and then the next big update hit, etc,
etc, etc. So now, nothing new goes into frozen. We work on fixing
what we have, and getting that as close to perfect as we can. Debian
was -much- smaller then. Imagine how much harder it would be today.
Debian has several reputations. Debian is known to be the most
stalward distribution when it comes to Free Software -- we (literally)
wrote the guidelines everyone else tries to follow. Debian is known to
have an excellent bug tracking system. Debian is known for it's
rock-solid releases (with none of that "we'll fix it in the x.01
release" that Red Hat used to be famous for (they may be better now)).
These are all reputations that we like and enjoy.
We are also known for having very long release cycles, and releases
with older software, not latest versions. This is unfortunate. But
there is a trade-off. If we go with the latest versions, we risk
losing the rock-solid releases. Forced to choose between quality
releases and newer software, I think most developers would choose the
quality over the novelty.
--
Buddha Buck bmbuck@14850.com
"Just as the strength of the Internet is chaos, so the strength of our
liberty depends upon the chaos and cacophony of the unfettered speech
the First Amendment protects." -- A.L.A. v. U.S. Dept. of Justice
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