Re: Linux Core Consortium
On Sat, Dec 11, 2004 at 09:41:47AM +0100, Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Brian Nelson (pyro@debian.org) [041210 19:55]:
> > Yup. There's never been a sense of urgency. The RM's throw out release
> > dates and goals every once in a while, but no one seems to take those
> > seriously.
>
> Not true. (And, perhaps you noticed, the release team avoided to give
> specific days in the last time, and the timeline depends on a day N.)
>
> > And probably for good reason.
>
> Remarks like this _are_ driving the release back.
No, they aren't. My remark is a symptom of the overall discouragement I
feel with the release process, not a cause. Probably the biggest thing
keeping sarge from releasing is the overall discouragement and
disenchantment developers feel with the release process.
> > For the second straight
> > release, when we've gotten to a point that it seemed we were nearly
> > ready for a release, we then discover we have no security autobuilders.
> > The release then gets pushed back a few more months, while the plebeian
> > developers sit around twiddling their thumbs unable to help wondering
> > why the hell no one thought to set up the autobuilders in the 2+ years
> > we've been preparing a release.
>
> Be assured, the setting up the security autobuilders are a topic since
> I'm following the process of releasing sarge closely. Like e.g. in
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/08/msg00003.html
> which tells us that we need them for being able to freeze. Or, a bit
> later,
> http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2004/09/msg00005.html.
> This even tells:
> | The bad news is that we still do not have an ETA for the
> | testing-security autobuilders to be functional. This continues to be
> | the major blocker for proceeding with the freeze
I was being sarcastic when I said we suddenly discovered it. Of course,
it's been known we'd need a security autobuilder infrastructure for
sarge since, uhhh, before woody's release.
> I don't think this mean that we suddenly discover it, but as other
> issues were more prominently blockers e.g. in July (like the toolchain),
> those issues were resolved back in September (and are still resolved
> now).
Anyone, developer or non-developer, can help fix toolchain problems.
However, the only people who can work on the testing-security
autobuilders are ... the security team and the ftp-masters? What's
that, a handful of people? With a bottleneck like that, isn't that a
much more important issue?
Besides, woody was release 2.5 years ago. In all that time, no one who
had the power to setup the autobuilder infrastructure bothered to do it?
Let's face it--that's a major fuckup. I'm not blaming you or anyone
else in particular. We're all volunteers, we're all busy, we can't
force anyone to do the work, etc. But we're not exactly lacking in
manpower here. If those with the power didn't have the time to setup
the infrastructure, surely over the course of 2.5 years we could have
found someone out of the 1,000 or so developers we have that had the
time and skill to do it. So why didn't that happen?
--
For every sprinkle I find, I shall kill you!
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