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

[Daniel Le Berre]

Le 01/10/2010 20:03, Olivier Méjean a écrit :
> Le vendredi 1 octobre 2010 08:51:34, atilla ontas a écrit :
>> I'm just wondering if we follow Mandriva's release cycle model. Every
>> 6th months a release or one year and one release. I think we should
>> make one release in one year. By doing so devs and translators won't
>> be in rush in every 6 months. Also there are major changes like
>> systemd/upstart; those system related things will be more mature in a
>> year to use. It makes the distro more stable and decraese mirrors
>> space waste.
>>
>> One more thing. Do we follow Mandriva's release naming scheme? I.e. do
>> we call our first release 2011.x ? I don't like this naming scheme and
>> suggesting using number of release as naming like Mageia 1.0 or using
>> code names.
>>
>> What's your opinion?
>>
> 
> What about a rolling distribution ? As an user (just plain user) i do not 
> think that installing a distribution is a goal, just a mean to use my 
> computer, so i wish i could not spend time installing a distribution every 6 
> months or every year. 
> 
> 

Mandriva has allowed to properly upgrade an existing installation from
the internet just if it was a normal security update for a few years (2
at least).

I do not see what would be the benefit of a rolling release compared to
the current process.

I am more concerned about the path from the cauldron to the final release.

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