Re: gnome-terminal and who
<quote who="Robert McQueen">
> OK, so maybe this is a case where you could be forgiven, but on my systems
> gnome-terminal is still *very* unstable. Unless there is a good reason,
> and upstream is in agreement, we should only have the specific versions of
> all of the software listed here:
> http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/desktop/2.2/2.2.1/sources/
>
> Any not any newer versions! For a large, integrated body of software like
> GNOME it doesn't make sense to pick random higher versions at risk of
> breaking the well-engineered stable and co-ordinated releases they do -
> especially when it comes down to libraries and very core desktop
> components like you maintain. Especially if they specifically asked us not
> to.
I would love to agree with this completely, but I think Debian maintainers
need the flexibility to install new *stable* releases of particular modules
even if they haven't been released as part of a GNOME Desktop or Developer
Platform release.
As long as Debian ships stable versions of our Desktop or Platform modules,
everything's fine.
Christian is right in saying that the 0.11.x release of vte was not
deliberately noted as unstable. However, there were some pretty strong
indicators:
- there was no annoucement of 0.11.x releases to gnome-announce-list
- the minor version number is odd (it is well known that almost all GNOME
modules use the Linux kernel versioning scheme, libxml2 is the obvious
rule-breaker here)
- 0.10.x was released with GNOME 2.2, and we have a minor version change
to 0.11.x
However, I do realise that the upstream ftp site could make it *far* more
obvious for users and packagers. As I'm the de-facto ftpmaster, I've been
working on ways to make the stable/development distinction clearer.
> What we also need to bear in mind is that even though this is unstable,
> the only path by which code can get into a Debian release is via unstable
> to testing and then stable. It's not meant to be the software itself
> that's unstable, it's meant to be the state of the distribution - in
> constant flux and in an unknown state of coherency.
Absolutely, fundamentally agree! You have expressed this point incredibly
well. Unstable is a release vector, and needs to be treated as such.
> If you want to run ahead and package unstable upstream versions, or CVS
> versions, experimental or people.d.o is a good place
Even though I'm strongly against developer/testing releases being put into
unstable, I would be *incredibly* happy to see someone maintain a repo for
debian users who want to test the development series stuff. Whether that's
done with experimental or a people.d.o repo is up to whoever maintains it.
It would be a really good testing vector for interested Debian users (who
care to test devel GNOME stuff), and it wouldn't interfere with the Debian
release and quality assurance process (which, I believe, is reliant on the
stability of unstable).
Thanks!
- Jeff
--
GU4DEC: June 16th-18th in Dublin, Ireland http://www.guadec.org/
It's not just a song! It's a document of my life!
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