[Mageia-dev] How will be the realese cycle?

[Marc Paré]

> I do not know if it is possible, but I think that the way the Eclipse
> foundation is running the Eclipse project is worth mentioning:
> - they have milestone target every 6 weeks, aimed at power users (stable
> enough to run on their own, but might break compatibility with existing
> plugins).
> For a linux distribution, it would mean main elements ok, for contrib
> packages dependencies might be broken.
> - then they have a RC cycle in the last two months to produce the final
> release. Only major problems are fixed there, no new features.
> - Service releases are produced 3 months and 8 months after release, to
> integrate major bug fixes =>  this could be some xxxx.1 and xxxx.2
> releases after the main xxxx release.
>
> The main reason of the milestone is that Eclipse committers are more or
> less supposed to run the latest millestone: have your cake and eat it
> too. Any problem in the milestone should that way be met by those
> developers and quickly reported for a fix in the next milestone.
>
> Here the idea is that Mageia supporters willing to help making it better
> should be able to run the latest milestone without must risks
> (basic functionality working).
>
> All the details about Eclipse release process is available on:
> http://www.eclipse.org/projects/dev_process/development_process_2010.php
>
> Daniel
>

I find this method interesting as the risk of breaking your system is 
minimized and you could conceivably re-install any broken/offending 
software. I think if Mageia adopted such a method it could attract more 
users who are interesting in helping in "bug finding". More bug finding 
-> more of a rock solid distro. We could then have a larger pool of testers.

Marc