EOL, rolling releases, and Extras (Was Re: Fedora Extras vs. CLOSED RAWHIDE)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 14:52:17 -0400, Toshio wrote:

> I agree that Core shouldn't be a rolling release, but I think Extras is
> currently very much a Rolling Release. 

Partially. Some packages are updated more frequently than others,
sometimes due to their experimental status and inclusion in the
testing/unstable trees. Some are updated when the packager thinks a new
upstream release contains interesting feature additions or important bug
fixes. Some packagers monitor upstream development closely and skip some
releases which would cause regression or upgrade problems. But the current
extra packages are provided in online repositories, so it doesn't really
matter if package foo is upgraded from 1.0.0 to 1.0.2 two months after the
release of FC2 or if a minor enhancement is added as 1.0.0-2 shortly after
it was implemented. The users of these online repositories benefit from
such updates.

In particular, all this is due to the current development model and
infrastructure. At fedora.us there's no "development" repository. There's
no repository which follows Rawhide daily and triggers automated
mass-rebuilds of extra packages. Updates make it into the
stable/testing/unstable tree directly. With the release of FC2, one could
stop doing upgrades and only push updates into testing/unstable, which
would cause major confusion due to the chosen repository names.

Btw, there's no requirement that maintenance of FE package for FC1 is done
by the same person than development of the package for next release of FC.

> And it's best if it stays that
> way.  As a spare time packager, I can't be constantly updating my system
> so I can release a package at the same time as a new Core is released. 

That will likely be necessary, unfortunately, in particular so complete
collections of FC and FE could be provided on CD/DVD for all those who
prefer not downloading large ISO images. Unless releases of FE are to be
scheduled some time after a release of FC, which wouldn't work as good
IMHO, because if FC/FE compatibility problems turned up at such a late
point, they would be more difficult to fix with FC updates, and it might
result in stop-ship problems with some FE packages.

> As a user, I want to find a package that's as close to upstream at the
> time I'm looking, not one that was released when the distro came out.

I'm surprised to hear that. Many upstream projects move you to the
bleeding edge. Why would you want extra packages to be more bleeding than
Core packages. You could also follow FC Development to get closer to
upstream releases of Core packages.