A new way to see the versions of Debian
Well, I hate that when I begin to think, and think, and everything goes
away.
I can't sleep and I'd like to put these ideas, and eventually share these
ideas
with others on a Debian's mailing-list. But who am I to think that my ideas
are worth to be consider? I don't know, I don't even use much Debian, and I
am
not a maintainer or nothing like that, I even never made a package. Who
cares.
I heard on 'what's new this week with Debian' (or something like that) that
stuff
is being talk right now about how freezing should happens. I did not even
read these
messages, but my mind is riding...
I came to see the development of Debian, as a big dependancy tree. But the
freezing
process do not seems to see it the way I do. If the freezing process would
obey this
way of seeing things, new packages would mostly be seen like adding stuff on
the last
version of Debian, since most packages are just adding to what is working
now. In my
mind, the only way to 'change' a version of Debian, is to change a package
on which
other packages depends. Or changing stuff (kernels, booting disks, etc) that
other
depends on to work. So, a maintainer that wish to change a package, (in a
perfect world,
adding stuff to a package, would not change the dependancy tree, just
changing the
interface exported to other package would, but since there iss a need to
recompile...),
is in fact proposing a change to the distribution.
How things should work, according to me?
I am not exactly sure. I would probably suggest something like assembling
complex objects:
-let's have let's say four versions evolving simultaneously, v1,v2,v3,v4,
-each time it is decided, v2 becomes v1, v3 becomes v2, v4 becomes v3, and
v1 is... discarded?
-everybody can ADD stuff, anytime, to any versions as long every packages
on which it depends exists and they all accepts to be based upon them
-you can modify a package, as long as no one depends on it
-once you have decided to accept that others packages depends on it,
you can't remove it, and you can't modify it (a bit severe, but short to
describe :-))
-if you leave it there more than x time, you are reputed to have decided to
accept
that others packages depends on it
I think, that's the way I see it. So once in a while, there is an empty v4.
And the
kernel maintainer can decide to add there a new kernel, or the good old one,
if he/she
wish. After a little while, the time that he/she accept that we add stuff
over it,
others maintainer get the same choice, and v4 is build subtree by subtree.
In this way of seeing, the very up to date version is the oldest v1. But it
had publicly known bugs. v3 is the last working version, it have few known
bugs, but have less packages than
v2 and v1. v4 does almost not work since few packages are there, but it
contains very new
features, and no known bugs, or really almost no known bugs.
Is it a bad idea?
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