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Re: The sarge release disaster - some thoughts



#include <hallo.h>
* Joey Hess [Tue, Mar 15 2005, 07:40:09PM]:

> > But considering the choice between releaseing Debian 3.1 with the new 
> > installer in 2005 or releasing Debian 3.1 with boot-floppies in 2003, it 
> > might have been possible finding some Debian developers hacking 
> > boot-floppies to use them for Debian 3.1 .
> > 
> > The new installer would have been ready in time for Debian 3.2 .
> 
> IIRC when we did this for potato, getting the woody boot-floppies
> updated to work with the new kernel and potato took something on the
> order of 6 months. Do not make the mistake of thinking the boot-floppies
> were maintainable. Expecting them to be ready in two months would be
> impractical.

I disagree. You want to see them six feet under and I understand that.
But don't compare the Woody release of b-fs with the previous ones. It
had already i18n and was based on debootstrap, read: it was able to
scale well enough. The installer part was not very smart (for things
like LVM integration without cludges), or kernel 2.6, but we talk about
year 2003!

> Also, bear in mind that if we'd have done that, then we would still be
> where we are right now, but would not have the debian installer ready to
> release with sarge.

Maybe. But AFAICS there are only few developers that have worked on
both, b-f and d-i. So how would keeping b-f have damaged d-i? Maybe it
would give less motivation and so not attract enough new developers, but
from my point of view, it just has been the other way round. d-i people
took over debian-boot overnight and most previous b-f people
disappeared because of feeling beeing replaced.

I know that initial d-i developers and those from the "new generation"
see it differently, saying that d-i has already been there, was designed
before, etc.pp. But it was a fresh toy and we have seen how long the
development did take. 

I wonder how you seriously can assume that burning the bridges was a
great idea.

Regards,
Eduard.
-- 
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