On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 23:58, Noah L. Meyerhans wrote: > On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 10:51:01PM +0100, Janusz A. Urbanowicz wrote: > > > In the BSD world, ports are not part of the OS. A release of the OS (on > > > CD or whatever) typically includes a snapshot of the ports tree. I > > > think we could do something similar using testing. Maybe any package > > > with priority optional or extra doesn't ever actually get "stable", but > > > instead lives forever in testing and unstable. Since the OS that we > > > actually release is significantly smaller without optional and extra, we > > > can release more frequently, which makes it easier to insure that > > > packages in testing are going to be installable on stable. > > > > Please don't. It is its support for packages (lack of separatiln between > > core and ports) that gives Debian the foothold as server OS. > > I disagree. I use FreeBSD at work (had to, it was already there before > I arrived) and while I'd much prefer to run "my" OS, I am very happy > with the ports system. It allows for a rapid release cycle (Typically 1 > release per quarter) and still produces a high quality server OS with > loads of apps. > > I think that if we could tie the testing distribution into such a > system, we'd be able to offer smoother upgrades and better stability > than the BSD ports system while still speeding up our release cycle. The big unsolbed question with more frequent and/or modular releases is security upgrades. One release per quarter: Do you do security support for 4 versions in parallel, or do you require people to update 4 times per year? Granted, the upgrades should each be smaller than now, but I think you can't require somebody to upgrade 1000 computers 4 times a year. This is especially true if it's only a core release - how is security for the rest of the packages done? Release sources only? Or ... ? I can't find a feasible system. Yes, I poposed modular releases in another mail, and I still think they could solve some of the problems Debian now has. But they create others, and so it will have to be thought to the end. (I'm sure this was done when testing was introduced - and is one of the reason it was done in that way). cheers -- vbi -- get my gpg key here: http://fortytwo.ch/gpg/92082481
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