Using updates-testing was [Re: Device change for Sil 3112 in latest kernel]

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Mon, 09 Aug 2004 02:20:58 +0200, Xose Vazquez Perez
<xose at astures.jazztel.es> wrote:
> Do you mean RHEL? This is Fedora, and I don't like to have a perpetual
> kernel in the distribucion as RHEL has.

I was referring to the distribution which must not be named... RHL.

> Mainly because upstream kernel
> is moving _very_ fast(and stable) and in Fedora there is no enough
> 'hacker power' to do backports of _all_ new features/fixes/... that
> upstream brings.

I understand things are moving faster in upstream kernel. At no point
did i suggest that focusing on security backports like RHL did in the
past was the right way
to proceed. I was reinterpreting Arjan's comment about 'balance' to my
benefit to suggest that we need something else to offset the damange
done by feature creep. And that something else.. is effective use of
the updates-testing repository to give people running a current
release of FC2 a headsup about feature creep issues before a mustfix
security issue forces a kernel to be released as an update.

Arjan is right everything ...sadly... is case-by-case with regard to
how package maintainers use updates-testing. Updates-testing is very
ill-defined. And that is a good and bad thing.
The kernel is a very sensitive package because of its close
association with hardware issues, and I think that as upstream kernel
development speeds up we are going to see feature creep breakage be a
continual annoying problem with some hardware in updated kernels. So
if we can't prevent it, my suggestion is.. keep updates-testing
populated so community can keep a faq document detailing feature creep
issues and workarounds/recovery steps.
 
-jef