Thoughts on GNOME 2.4 migration

[Jeff Waugh <jdub@perkypants.org>]

Hi everyone,

A few people have asked me for some thoughts on what should happen with 2.4
in Debian now that it's been released, so I thought I should mail a quick
summary here, too. I hope it helps - Debian and GNOME are my two favourite
Free Software projects. Could they be more different? ;-) Anyway...

So the status is that 2.2 is kicking butt in unstable, but hasn't yet gone
down into testing. Where could it go from here?

  1) Ignore the glibc-based 2.2->testing migration problems and do a piece
  meal upgrade of 2.4 into unstable. When the glibc issues are sorted out,
  2.4 will probably migrate down to testing en masse.

  PRO: 2.4 in unstable and in everyone's face as it goes in
  CON: Piecemeal upgrade of 2.4 in unstable may be painful
  CON: No fallback stable release in testing, may delay distro release

  2) Leave 2.2 to migrate from unstable to testing as it is, and get 2.4
  working in experimental. When 2.2 has fully migrated, shift 2.4 into
  unstable en masse, and allow it to migrate down to testing.

  PRO: Testing will have a guaranteed stable release as a fallback
  PRO: En masse shift to 2.4 in unstable may be easier on users and the BTS
  CON: Development in experimental, may not provide very wide user access

So, with my reasonably conservative release engineering hat on, I'd
recommend option 2, especially when looking at it from the full Debian
release perspective (which I think is important, especially for very
user-facing GNOME packages).

Thanks, I use sid's GNOME on my iBook and work machine, and it rocks very
hard. Thanks to all the dedicated package maintainers for making my life so
much easier. :-)

- Jeff

-- 
linux.conf.au 2004: Adelaide, Australia         http://lca2004.linux.org.au/
 
   She said she loved my mind, though by most accounts I had already lost
                                    it.