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

[Olivier Méjean]

Le samedi 2 octobre 2010 02:09:47, nicolas vigier a écrit :

> 
> This rolling release already exists, it's called the backport
> repository. But don't expect the same stability as the fixed release,
> you can't have both.
> 

Well, i disagree for a good reason, in free software there is no (or mainly 
no) separation between new versions of a software only correcting bugs, and 
new versions of the same software adding new functionnalities. Let's take an 
example, digikam.
Changes from digikam 1.3 to 1.4 are bugs correction affecting digikam 1.3 and 
addition of new functionnalities. So what ? I need digikam more stable so 
let's use the version that corrects bugs, so the latest, but it also adds new 
functionnalities that may provide bugs ... (and in the case of Digikam 1.4 it 
requires KDE 4.5, unfortunately there is no update to KDE 4.5 for Mandriva 
2010 !) what to do ? 

I also add that creating backports is creating new packages for older versions 
that is more time to compilation, more time to ensure quality, and so. In the 
whole i am not sure that it.

There are exceptions for development, such as Scribus which delivers two 
versions :
- 1.3.3.x (current and last version 1.3.3.14) which has been improved over 
time by bug correction (no addition of new functionnalities)
-1.3.6, 1.3.7, 1.3.8 and 1.3.9 which are development version, adding new 
functionnalities, bugs correction.
You just have to go on sourceforge to see how Scribus works : 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/scribus/files/ there is a stable version 
1.3.3.14, devel versions and svn versions. Devel are quite stable, usable but 
Scribus team still have them as devel versions and recommend that distribution 
package 2 scribus versions : scribus package for the stable version 1.3.3.14 
and scribus-ng for development package, this is not the case for Mandriva, it 
had causes some problem when i was doing Magnum since some of us were using 
1.3.3.x branch others with more recent were using 1.3.6 devel branch creating 
incompatibilites between files.

So one cannot say that stability is affected by backport when backported 
packages are to correct existing bugs (but maybe adding new bugs due to new 
functionnalities). Noboby would say that KDE 4.1 is more stable than KDE 4.5 
but there is no means to update KDE 4.x to KDE 4.x+1 at the moment, and i 
consider that must be in update policies. With Mandriva 2010 i am stick to 
4.3.5 and i bet there will be no more evolution for KDE 4.3 branch.


-- 
Olivier Méjean
Président de l'Association des Utilisateurs Francophones de Mandriva Linux
http://mandrivafr.org
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