Re: XFree vs. xorg
Chris Metzler wrote:
On Sat, 07 Aug 2004 21:04:31 +0800
John Summerfield <debian@ComputerDatasafe.com.au> wrote:
Brian Nelson wrote:
Mark my words, Sarge+1 will not take 3 or 4 years to release. 1 to 1.5
years is my estimate. 2 years, tops.
How do you justify that pov? At present, we have more platforms than
ever before, more packages than every before. What's changed to
alleviate the log cycle time we've had so far?
Why is the number of packages relevant? It certainly wasn't for this
Oh dear. More packages implies more complexity.
Take a server set up web server, and we'll asume that be don't need to
trouble over lic, kernel.
Testing bare apache, no worries. The Apache Software Foundation releases
the software, Debian builds it in their recommended configuration, and
it "just works."
No releationships beterrn packages.
Add Perl support.
Now you have two packages to test, and worse, two releationships
Perl ==> Apache
Apache <==Perl
Build an ssl-capable version. Here are the new relationships
Apache ==> Apache-ssl
Apache-ssl <== Apache
Perl ==> Apache
Apache <==Perl
Perl ==> Apache-ssl
Apache-ssl <==Perl
Throw in a couple of OS databases, Jsp, Tomcat, Javabeans,
PHP{3,4,5},Python, webdav etc etc etc and there are quite a few
relationships that need to be tested.
And the databases, Perl, Python can hit stuff outside the webserver such
as mail....
This is why the number of packages is important.
release. After all, there's nothing preventing Debian from issuing
the next release after Sarge *one week* after Sarge goes out, other
than that it wouldn't be different enough to be interesting. The
number of essential packages is the same; the number of optional
packages has increased, but that doesn't matter, since anything that
can't deal with its release-critical bugs in time doesn't drop down
to stable. What has made Sarge take so flipping long was the new
installer project. There isn't anything like that planned for the
next release that I'm aware of.
The best predictor of the future is the past. Here is a summary of the
past taken from http://encyclopedia.fablis.com/index.php/Debian where
there is a table that summarises the critical points:
* 3.1* -- /sarge/, anticipated in 2004
* 3.0 -- /woody/, July 19th, 2002
* 2.2 -- /potato/, August 15th, 2000
* 2.1 -- /slink/, March 9th, 1999
* 2.0 -- /hamm/, July 24th, 1998
* 1.3 -- /bo/, June 2nd, 1997
* 1.2 -- /rex/, 1996
* 1.1 -- /buzz/, 1996
For why there was no 1.0 and what happened before:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/project-history/ch-detailed.en.html
On the face of it,the delay "due to the new installer project" doesn't seem so extraordinary.
If anyone has any insights as to what's changed that will reduce the cycle time, please offer them.
--
Cheers
John
-- spambait
1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au Z1aaaaaaa@computerdatasafe.com.au
Tourist pics http://portgeographe.environmentaldisasters.cds.merseine.nu/
Reply to: