"Official" Debian 1.3 CD-ROM/Release Methodology
Friends,
Is there yet an Official 1.3 CD-ROM available from anywhere? Is it
bootable? I concur with many of you that it is *very* important to
have an "official" cd-rom, not primarily becase SPI could bring in a
little dough, but rather because you just don't know what you're
getting when you get a CD. I was recently considering buying the
Cheap Bytes CD. There wasn't that much on their web site about what
*exactly* was on the CD. I emailed them and asked a lot of questions:
When were the files for the image downloaded? Do you have the stable,
contrib, and non-free DIRs? And they could not provide sufficient
answers. They couldn't tell me exactly when the snapshot was taken.
Unfortunately, with the way things are done right now, this is very
important. This is because usually when a release is announced, there
are still a lot of problems. (Ok, less in 1.3 there there were in 1.2.)
This problem could be solved if there was an Official image released
by SPI. Now, if we're going to do this we'll also need to either
A) include a minor rev number (1.3.X) which actually means something
or B) at least include a production date or C) change our Release
Methodology.
Now Bruce, I know my comments are going to frustrate you. I know that
it is impossible (without hiring legions of testers, and even then
you can still only get 98% of the way there) to make a release which
is "perfect" because in point of fact the release doesn't really get
tested until everyone downloads it and trys to install it. No, I'm not
accusing the developers of not testing their stuff. I have the utmost
confidence that they do their able best to test their stuff before
calling it released. However, I am a software developer myself and I
know that in any complex system it is a near impossible task to test
every case and scenario of a system. You do your best and then let it
go.
So, what changes am I suggesting for the Release Methodology? Well,
it would be presumptuous of me to suggest changes when I don't know
what is currently in place. I would suggest that a few basic procedures
be followed though. When a change to a package is released, have
two people **other than** the maintainer test it. One should upgrade
an existing package, the other should install it "fresh". When a
release is being put together, have a number of people install it
from scratch on a clean system. Now of course we'll need volunteers
for this. Now although I don't have time to maintain a package, I'd
be more than happy to be a package tester for one or two. I'd also be
happy to be a test release installer. I have a spare 150MB IDE disk
and I'd be glad to test-install releases before they become official.
I think we should have sign-ups for both of these functions just as
we do for the package mainainer-ships.
Comments?
--
Jens B. Jorgensen
jjorgens@bdsinc.com
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