Barclay, Daniel wrote: > As I wrote in my other message, I'm talking about changing the "chunk size" > of releases, not the quality. Debian releases work more or less like this: - new software versions are published upstream (source code). - this software is packaged into debian and enters 'unstable' - it is tested by users of 'unstable'. If no serious bugs are found within a certain time, the software is considered well enough for testing and enters the 'testing' distribution. - still some serious bugs are only discovered, *after* the package hits 'testing' - in order to limit the new bugs entering 'testing', at some time 'testing' becomes frozen, so only bug fixes are allowed to enter 'testing'. - after _all_ release critical bugs have been fixed, there are _zero_ RC bugs remaining and then the release manager will release the new version of debian. Because of the large number of packages, and hence the large number of bugs to be fixed, the frozen state of the next release lenny, has already been running since end of July with no release, yet. It doesn't seem reasonable to lower the barrier for improvements much, if the final stage of the release lasts for about half a year or so anyway. [By the way: many people actually prefer a stable system with not too many updates for longer periods of time. ] If you really need newer software and don't mind the lack of stability that goes along with it and the many more updates to be applied, you should consider ugrading to 'testing' or 'unstable'. In conclusion, the release cycles of debian are long because of both the extensive testing and because of the number of changes. I guess the limiting factor is rather the extensive testing than just the amount of release goals. YMMV, Johannes
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