To update or not to update...

[Michael Stahnke]

On 8/16/07, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>
> >
> > Sure. But we have a mailing list and sending a "what do you guys think:
> > should I update from foo-x.y to foo-x.(y+1) or foo-(x+1).0 because bar"
> > is not that much overhead IMHO.
>
> Yes but in many cases the people most qualified to make that
> determination are those maintaining the packages. If you want to
> explicitly document that maintainers have the choice to ask in this
> list, that would be a good thing to do.
> >
> > I'd like to agree, but seems at least some people simply build new stuff
> > for EPEL and don't care (or don't know) about the "only update to new
> > version if there is a strong need to" policy which EPEL has. So we
> > sooner or later need tell those maintainers to be more careful, adjust
> > our policy/goals, start EPEL-rolling in parallel, <insert other
> > possibilities> or live with the fact that parts of the EPEL-stable repo
> > follow the a rolling-release scheme similar to Fedora while other parts
> > go for the careful RHEL-style. The latter would IMHO be quite bad, and I
> > really don#t want us to go in that direction.
>
> Watch changes. If you see maintainers pushing updates where it isn't
> required then engage them in a private discussion. Maybe they have
> reasons to update which wasn't obvious. Maybe there wasn't aware of the
> policy or thought that this particular instance needed a exception for
> valid reasons. Lets see if there are problems to be solved before
> attempting to solve any.
>
> Rahul
>
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>
I am enjoying this discussion.  Both sides have very good points.  As
for my opinion, I think that new packages can go to stable (assuming
deps are there) and updates, can sit until major update.  I am sure
this has flaws, (deps in particular).  I feel that EPEL isn't too
usable yet for an EL customer.  There just are not  enough packges.  I
don't think we should have more barriers to get packages in.   I know
customer could enable testing, but if they felt ok enabling testing,
they probably wouldn't be running on RHEL/EL.  I understand what
EPEL/Fedora testing means,  customers hear testing and stay away.

stahnma