Re: Staged Freezes

[Brian White <bcwhite@pobox.com>]

I'll just add a few comments about what I learned as Release Manager...

 - everybody wants a freeze
 - a few people always want to freeze "right now"
 - a few people have very good reasons not to freeze "right now"
 - there are always some not-ready packages

Some past example:
 - new X release 2 weeks before release
 - boot disks not even started until a week before release
 - new kernel (2.2) release just before a freeze
 - dozens of "must have" packages uploaded in the week after the freeze
   (even though the freeze had been announced 2 months earlier)

To me, this means that you can't wait for a good time to freeze.  You have
to force it.  Decide what it absolutely necessary and bite the bullet for
the rest of it.  In truth, the best thing about being frozen is the power
it gives the release manager.  Every package achieves it's "most stable"
point at a different time.  Once the distribution is officially frozen,
most maintainers will automatically target their packages for the next
distribution if it's stability is lower than a previous release.  It's
up to the release manager, however, to catch and force this upon those
maintainers that just don't quite get this concept (which I think applies
to all of us at one point or another -- I know I've made poor judgements
on my packages once or twice in the past).

Anyway...  My $0.02.

                                          Brian
                                  ( bcwhite@pobox.com )

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        Premature optimization is the root of all evil.  -- Donald Knuth