Re: Debian rolling: tentative summary
On Mon, May 02, 2011 at 01:31:31PM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Since I already sent too many mails in the 'rolling' discussion, I
> decided to send one more. Here is an attempt at a summary of what was
> said so far. It might not be complete, it's probably a bit biased, but I
> hope that it's still better than nothing. When replying, please try to
> focus on specific points, and change the subject accordingly.
That's a decent summary of what was said I think.
Though I feel that to make the discussion more solid, the following is
missing:
- What are the problems you try to address with rolling? And no "the
users want it" isn't an answer, I'd reply "why do they want it" if
that's the answer I get.
- Are we sure that rolling is the best way to address those problems?
- What is rolling exactly ?
I'd add a few questions:
- we acknowledged that some derivatives (e.g. aptosid) are doing the
work of stabilizing unstable. Isn't it a better way of doing things
in the sense that it doesn't harm testing a bit? IOW wouldn't it be
a better idea to somehow (with their consent) swallow a derivative
that seems to do what you want to instead of suffering NIH and
reinvent something a derivative does?
- I'll stress again that testing is a release tool, and sometimes to
unblock large transitions it's easier to remove a package from the
distribution so that it doesn't block thousands of other, or because
the breakage it introduces is too large. This practice is very
important, and I remember the release team having strong
altercations with other DDs at the time whereas testing wasn't
targeted at users. What would it be if testing becomes more user
targetted? Should the removal policies be amended ? Beware, I think
it's a huge no-go for the release team.
--
·O· Pierre Habouzit
··O madcoder@debian.org
OOO http://www.madism.org
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