[Mageia-dev] Proposal: Updating released versions (long post)

[Luca Berra]

On Thu, Oct 07, 2010 at 07:49:29PM -0400, Frank Griffin wrote:
>I'd like to propose the following model for updating released versions:
>
>1) Users should not have to see, except in minor ways, the different
>repositories.  Urpmi may see them, and advanced or ideologically polar
>users may care about them (e.g. free vs non-free), but most users
I object to this specific point, if what we are doing is free software
that should be made clear to users. and i believe the user shold be
asked wether they want to use only free software or not.

>2) The update tool we give these users should distinguish between
>security updates and backports/testing, but present them both.  This is
updates are not necessarily limited to security, but ok
backports is one thing, testing is a completely different one
the only use for testing is pulling out a specific (set of) packages for
QA purpose, no user should ever see those.
but the idea of separating the two in the user interface is sound.

>(Here's the biggie :-) )
>4) We need to enhance the urpmi.recover functionality and bring it fully
>into mainstream urpmi so that ANY PACKAGE CAN BE ROLLED BACK TO ITS
>PREVIOUS VERSION (sorry for the caps).  If we don't want to be stuck
I just read it 3 times, and i still believe doing the above might prove to be a
nightmare.
rolling back a single, well identified change is a doable task.
rolling back proceduraly a complex change becomes exponentially complex
even for experienced system engineers, let alone a piece of software.

i'll spend more time on doing qa on packages pushed to released distros.

L.


-- 
Luca Berra -- bluca at vodka.it