[Mageia-dev] libmtp 1.1.3 or greater for kio-mtp (on Mageia 2)

[Claire Robinson]

On 22/01/13 16:18, Robert Wood wrote:
...
> As an aside, I find it contradictory that we don't have an LTS so have
> to completely reinstall every eighteen months, yet we are often quite
> behind on latest releases/bleeding edge stuff like this.
> 
> Thanks. :~)

Releases are every 9 months and upgrades are supported.

We're currently approaching release number 3. At what stage did other
distributions get an LTS, out of interest?

I'd like to see an LTS too but at the moment I don't think we have the
resources to properly maintain one. I'd personally prefer we wait until
we can properly support one than agree to one which could be detrimental
to Mageia as a whole.

Let me explain what I mean. Speaking from a QA perspective, despite our
best efforts there are still only a very small handful of people (think
2 or 3) whose job it is to test every single update you receive on each
architecture (currently i586 & x86_64). So each update is tested at
least twice at the moment, assuming we don't find any problems and have
to retest. Arm support is also anticipated in the future.

When Mageia 3 is arrives we will be supporting 2 live releases again
(mga2 & mga3) which instantly doubles the amount of work we have in QA.

On top of this we also have ISO testing, pre-release testing of the ISOs
before they are sent to the mirrors. ISO testing takes away one week of
every 4, roughly, in the build up to the final release. We're expecting
backports to open at some stage aswell.

Inevitably, we struggle with the sheer volume of work. When backports do
open it will add to that workload.

Were we to also have an LTS with current manpower levels each release
would suffer.

How can you help you ask? Easy! Get involved and help us testing updates :)

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team

Thanks
Claire (MrsB)