[Mageia-dev] Release cycles proposals, and discussion

[Michael Scherer]

Le lundi 13 juin 2011 à 03:07 -0700, Ron a écrit :
> I made another post in a different thread about the way I feel the release cycle should go. After more thinking
>  I do think that I really have the right idea and here is why...
> Going the route of release cycles really does not make this distribution fit into anything. You going to try 
> and appeal to new people? Ubuntu has that covered and you will never steal that role. Hoping to become a geek type 
> distro? There are many that have that covered. 
>
> The best thing you can do as a team is try to come up with something that makes you stand apart from the crowd.

There is a limited set of options, and as you can see, none of your idea
was not already explored by someone else.

>  I never understood the release cycle model anyhow, whats the goal of that? 

If everything move all days, you cannot :
- translate software ( as the string will change every day )
- create documentation ( for the same reason )
- communicate ( as everything ca be broken at any time )
- ensure stability ( as each change can bring unstability )

And for user, some do not want to redo training every week for their
users, because libreoffice got updated, because ff 4 just arrived and
75% of extensions do not work, etc. 

In fact, the whole release model is basically what is used all over the
place, from lower level like kernel to higher level like kde. So you can
get lots of feedback on it.

> To show off the latest tech in the open source world? Really? With Slackware and Fedora and 
> Suse and hosts of other flavors of GNU/Linux all doing the same thing?

So basically, you suggest that since everybody is already doing it, this
is useless. So the logical conclusion is we should drop the
distribution ?

> What do we have that others don't? 

We have the same thing, this is the strength of free software. We
basically all work together.


> We have something new that can be great 
> if planned right. There are 100's of distros releasing in cycles, let's get 
> out of that and truly showcase the best of open source through:
> Unstable branch - absolute latest software here...

like cauldron ? or debian unstable, fedora rawhide, opensuse factory,
mandriva cooker ?

> Rolling unstable - Still risky but not on the lines of unstable

like debian testing ( and CUT ) ? suse tumbleweed ? arch linux ?


> Rolling stable - everyday use and very stable 

Very stable for a distribution mean "that do not change". That's
incompatible with the idea of rolling per definition. And in order to
have stable software, you have to freeze them and fix bugs. So to have
that on the whole distribution, you need to freeze the whole
distribution for a time, and then ask for test, fix bugs and then
release. Which is exactly what we currently do since years. 

> You could throw in "snapshots" and support those for X amount of time 
> as I have posted in the other place if you wanted (based on rolling unstable). 
> You could also have LTS releases based on Rolling stable.... It's up to you.
> I don't believe we need yet another "burn new disk every X months for????" distribution. 

So basically, you just reinvented the concept of release, and the way
Mandriva, Debian, Fedora work since years. 

-- 
Michael Scherer