Re: shortening release cycles
On Jul 11, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> * stop accepting new packages until the release manager is happy
> about the state of the distribution
> -- I think this is the best yet -- basically, an early freeze
> with the possibility of unfreezing?
I'm not sure what this buys us, and I don't see the point of being
able to "unfreeze." I suppose I could see us deciding not to release
potato after freezing it, perhaps if XFree 4.0 came out. Once we've
done the frozen/unstable fork, it's hard to "thaw out" again (since
unstable would now be woody)... either one or the other names would
have to be dropped, confusion would ensue, etc. I suppose we could
have freezes without an unstable fork, but I think it would detract
from Debian's appeal to power users (after all, I think we're the only
distribution that lets our users ride the bleeding edge with daily
updates).
Here's my 3X+1 week (X >= 3) "frozen to stable" plan.
1. Stop adding binaries to the override files for pending release. At
this point, unstable becomes frozen: No package reorganizations
that add binary packages allowed during freeze. No new source
packages either.
2. (1)+X weeks: Stop allowing bugfix uploads to frozen that fix bugs
of severity <= Normal.
3. (2)+X weeks: Stop allowing uploads to frozen that don't fix dependency
problems, Release Critical bugs, or architecture autobuild problems.
4. (3)+X weeks: Absolute freeze. Binary-only architecture sync
uploads only.
5. (4)+1 week: Release. Old stable wanders off to stud.
Any of these conditions could be overriden by the release manager, the
project leader, or the technical committee. Or presumably by general
resolution (ick).
On boot-floppies issues (my debian-boot subscription request is in the
mail): I do think we need at least "close to working" boot floppies by
the freeze date. No, I have absolutely no clue how to go about doing
that. I will try to get a working Linux/APUS (PowerPC Amiga) config
in there.
Chris, who interrupted this post to deal with the acrid smoke coming
from his 7 year old Commodore-Amiga 1960 monitor.
--
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| Chris Lawrence | Get your Debian 2.1 CD-ROMs |
| <quango@watervalley.net> | http://www.lordsutch.com/ |
| | |
| Grad Student, Pol. Sci. | Join the party that opposed the CDA |
| University of Mississippi | http://www.lp.org/ |
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