long running sessions, restarts, etc.

[Will Woods]

On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 15:20 -0400, David Zeuthen wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-09-29 at 18:46 +0000, Colin Walters wrote:
> >  For this reason among others I think we should move to installing
> > updates immediately before logout/reboot.
> 
> Completely agree. FWIW, this is what most mobile "computers" such as the
> iPhone and Android does. And, for the record, how OS X works too (unless
> the only update is for an application like iTunes). They can of course
> do this because they don't issue updates almost _every day_ (or what
> feels like every day, anyway) like we do in Fedora.

One of the things Those Other OSes do is to batch updates into larger
Service Pack / point-release updates, and only offer the individual
pieces as "hotfixes" to those who really, really need (or want) them.

If we were just trying to improve the *perception* that there's too many
updates (and they're not that useful), the simplest solution would be to
batch updates and release them as point-release updates along with
release notes and an appropriate amount of fanfare about new features
and fixes.

> A cause and/or effect of this is that our updates
> (and main release) aren't really well-tested, at least not in my
> experience. 

Well, batching updates would also mean that they'd spend more *required*
time in the testing repository. Which is a necessary step to get better
manual QA on updates. It's not sufficient to guarantee better QA -
"spends time in the testing repo" does not necessarily imply "has been
tested" - but it can't really hurt.

Furthermore, while it's obvious simpler to test a single package than a
whole load of 250 packages, it's *much* easier to test one large update
payload than each possible combination of 250 individual updates.

[snip]
> So it puts even more load on QA that we don't really have.

> Sorry if what I said sounds ranty and insulting to the Fedora community.
> If it did, I didn't mean it. But I really really think that "how can we
> make daemons survive lots of updates?" is the wrong question. The right
> question, IMO, is "how can we ship software that doesn't need many
> updates?". Which, of course, is harder to solve (the solution may
> include a longer, more realistic release-cycle). But solving it brings
> other benefits too.

No, I totally agree - making the daemons survive updates better is
probably not the most pressing problem with the Fedora update system.

On the other hand, it's a problem that can be solved with code rather
than needing long bikesheddy discussions and policy arguments. And I
think we all know that, as a group, we're way better with code than
talk.

Still, I think it's worth trying to get some *data* about what the
*actual* problems are with the update system and see if we can't have
some good, productive discussions that lead to actual positive change. 

So, uh, let's.. just.. go ahead and do that, then.

-w