Re: Bits from the Release Team - Kicking off Wheezy

[Holger Levsen <holger@layer-acht.org>]

Hi,

On Donnerstag, 28. April 2011, Joey Hess wrote:
> Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> > There are other possible changes but I want to discuss them separately
> > because even without those changes, the testing without freeze is a
> > worthwhile goal in itself.
[...]
> I think these are interesting ideas, but they don't seem to be specific
> to rolling; it seems they could be applied to testing just as well,
> and indeed mostly you've phrased them as applying to testing.

Absolutly.

From observing the discussion, there are two points I'd like to add:

1. If debian-devel@ doesnt get the distinction between rolling, frozen and 
testing right, no one else will. And appearantly rolling has already caught as 
a name, I saw a laptop running "Debian mint rolling" yesterday...
My point is, if there will be a fourth suite, the name(s) absolutly must be 
chosen very carefully.

2. In the past there used to be two rather opposites use-cases of testing: 
some (luckely more than just the release team) see it as a tool to develop 
stable. Others see it (mostly) as a usable distribution.
I'm unconvinced that splitting testing into rolling+testing will benefit both 
use cases. (And I think this is shared rather widely in this thread.)

So IMO testing should be made more constantly usable (ie by better 
documentation how to deal with things, by better promotion (ie by means of a 
symlink rolling->testing)) but the tension described in 2. should be kept, as 
it's benefiting both use cases of testing.


cheers,
	Holger