Re: On syncing freeze dates with other distributions
On Tue, Aug 04 2009, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 11:55:04AM -0500, Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 03 2009, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> > Amen. I think two years is a little too long and 18 months would be much
>> > better.
>> We never actually have managed the 18 month release, have we? We
>> freeze approximatly 18 months after the last release, and then release
>> about 2 years or so after the last release.
>
> By my count:
>
> Etch froze after 18 months, and released after 22 months.
> Lenny froze after 15 months, and released after 22 months.
So we have done the last two releases in roughly two year
intervals, and the freezes roughly two years apart, which is some
indication that we can sustain the 24 month cycle, more or less.
> Squeeze freeze is currently planned for 10 months (Dec '09), with
> release perhaps at around 15 months (May '10).
Which seems a bit short for what I wanted to have in the
release, as I have indicated in other mails.
>
>> I also think that we should be looking at when we freeze not
>> merely at when a derived distro freezes, but when major system
>> components release, and when top level sister distributions freeze
>> (we'll get far more benefit for Debian users were we to sync up with
>> fedora/rhel; and have more clout with upstream, especially if Ubuntu
>> sync's up with Debian/red hat as well).
>
> AIUI, Mark's aim was to get all distros to sync up, not just Debian
> and Ubuntu:
>
> ] There's one thing that could convince me to change the date of the
> ] next Ubuntu LTS: the opportunity to collaborate with the other, large
> ] distributions on a coordinated major / minor release cycle. If two out of
> ] three of Red Hat (RHEL), Novell (SLES) and Debian are willing to agree
> ] in advance on a date to the nearest month, and thereby on a combination
> ] of kernel, compiler toolchain, GNOME/KDE, X and OpenOffice versions,
> ] and agree to a six-month and 2-3 year long term cycle, then I would
> ] happily realign Ubuntu's short and long-term cycles around that. I
> ] think the benefits of this sort of alignment to users, upstreams and
> ] the distributions themselves would be enormous. I'll write more about
> ] this idea in due course, for now let's just call it my dream of true
> ] free software syncronicity.
>
> -- http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/146
I would not be opposed to a general 2 ear cycle for most major
Linux distributions and components; but I think it is perhaps premature
to shorten the current cycle to freeze in 4 months or so from now in
advance of indications that we are converging to a common schedule, or
that any of the underlying agreements mentions above have been arrived
at.
Based on our last two releases, the natural time frame for
freeze would be next May/June, looking for a December 2010 release,
giving us plenty of time to talk to other parties and adjust the
release for Squeeze + 1 as needed.
manoj
--
But the supreme blight, ignorance, is the blight of blights. Destroying
this blight, be free of blights, bhikkhus. 243
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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