Re: debian LTS
at bottom :-
On 9/8/13, Faheem Mitha <faheem@faheem.info> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 7 Sep 2013, shirish शिरीष wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>> There is and was interesting discussion on having/making a Debian LTS
>> kinda thing and I was in two minds whether to share it or not. While
>> there has been some movement [1][2] there have also been concerns for
>> the same [3] . Ultimately what pushed me to write about it is that the
>> discussion got featured in lwn.net [4] . There is just so much stuff
>> people can do only if we can motivate them for it.
>
>> 1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/08/msg00645.html
>> 2. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/09/msg00098.html
>> 3. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/09/msg00100.html
>> 4. http://lwn.net/Articles/565007/#Comments
>
> Hi Shirish,
>
> I've been following this discussion somewhat, and have also read the LWN
> article. I agree with Russ Allbery when he said it is very difficult to
> maintain software for longer than a two year lifespan, because after that
> (if not before) the upstreams lose interest. Actually, based on my
> experiences, I'm surprised that one can get most upstreams to cooperate at
> all with fixes to older software - my experience is that developers will
> only fix the current version and want you to stay updated to that if you
> want bug fixes. I think that without *substantial* inputs of money, such a
> scheme is not feasible. I'm pretty impressed that Debian can manage it for
> 3 years for stable, even if they don't do it perfectly.
>
> Regards, Faheem Mitha
Hi Faheem,
I do agree quite a bit of what you shared. In fact, there are many
pushes and pulls happening both for what has been released as well
what is being released. On a slightly different footing, I had shared
this sometime back [1] [2] . It basically talks about automated
testing for which 2 things have been shared as solutions [3] [4] [5] .
Now even here there is shortage of people power although this should
interest people who want their packages to come to testing as soon as
possible. The faster the packages are in testing, they would be tested
more and theoretically freeze would be of shorter time-frame.
So we can pulls and tensions within the project here as well.
1. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/05/msg00523.html
2. http://wiki.debian.org/AlwaysReleasableTesting
3. jenkins.debian.net
4. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2013/08/msg00006.html
5. http://packages.debian.org/sid/autopkgtest
I would love to see what people make of this as well. I do agree with
your point that downstream can only do so much. i.e. why we see many a
times debian holding patches for things which upstream considers
outdated at times because they have users for them. Case in point,
classic GNOME.
--
Regards,
Shirish Agarwal शिरीष अग्रवाल
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