FC4 state of affairs and FC5

[Rahul Sundaram]

Gilboa Davara wrote:

>Hello all,
>
>I've been lurking this list for quite some time now, waiting for a good
>reason to post... 
>Seems that I found one.
>
>Let me first point out that this is not a rant; I understand that the
>Fedora Core is supplied "as is" and that the FC development team isn't
>working *for me*. In short, they don't owe me anything.
>Plus, being a Linux developer myself, I can appreciate the *perceived*
>(in my eyes) lack of interest in dealing with (what-seems-to-be-in-my-
>eyes) bugs, when the FC5 development is at full swing.
>  
>
This is largely a matter of perception. While many of the development 
ideas get discussed in various lists and you see the result of the 
development in the form of rawhide reports and new code, bug reports 
tend to be fixed in a more resilent way. Logging into #fedorabot IRC 
channel tends to give you a better idea of whats going on. Fedora 
Bugzilla recently got a RSS feed feature when it works properly would 
enable anyone to get the reports in a better way. I have also been 
throwing out the idea of a bugs list for all the incoming reports, 
comments and status changes in a equivalent way to the cvs commits list


>However, here comes my problem:
>FC5 is 6 months (at least) away.
>The lvm2 problem was only fixed in -updates; it still plagues new
>installations. (I saw a couple of threads about it in fedoraforum.) The
>fix did not go downstream to a new ISO images.
>  
>
Fedora Project does not push out new ISO images after a release has been 
made. IIUC intermediate ISO images are considered a large amount of 
burden in form of increased bandwidth usage for mirror maintainers


>FC4 users cannot use their Palm and a full fix is no where to be seen.
>GDB is effectively dead when debugging libraries.
>And python python-gtksourceview, while fixed in rawhide, will not making
>it (at least to my knowledge) into FC4.
>  
>
If you consider it critical enough, you can request a update for FC4 in 
the reports have you made.

>My question is simple:
>Is it the view of the FC foundation, that the FC4 bug-fixing is taking
>second seat to the FC5 development?
>  
>
Fedora Foundation does not exist as of today but you can get my 
independent opinion. Development isnt orthogonal to bug fixes. Active 
development includes bug fixes many of which can potentially be released 
as updated on the FC4/3 branches as required.  While there is no 
guarantee that all of the bugs that you come across will get fixed 
within the time frame that would ideal for you, bugs are getting fixed 
nevertheless.

>Is it acceptable, again, in the FC foundation's eyes, that up until the
>release of the FC5, people will not be able to sync with their Palm or
>have dead installations on their hands (lvm problem)
>I may be wrong here, isn't the lvm problem big enough to require ISO
>remaster?
>  
>
There are many other bugs like the installation crashes on some chipsets 
or the Xorg display issue which are relatively wide spread. This goes 
back to the question of whether we consider it appropriate it to have 
new ISO images between releases but you dont really need to wait for 
Fedora to do it. You can do this yourself along with anyone else who 
considers it important. see 
http://fedoranews.org/contributors/gene_czarcinski/update_distro/

>Isn't the Palm problem serious enough to warrant a switch to an older
>pilotd (and gnome-pilot)?
>Am I the only to feel that these problems are critical?
>  
>
Putting a bugzilla comment would get you the maintainer's opinion on this.

>Again let me stress, that being free-riding user (Sadly enough, I've yet
>to pitch in and find some why to contribute to FC) I'm in no position to
>rant about the stability of FC4.
>However, being someone with vested interest in the FC project, I'm very
>interested in the view of the FC project about the above.
>  
>
If you wish to contribute take a look at the help wanted[1] page or 
especially at Fedora Bug Squad[2] efforts. There are many mentors[3] who 
are willing to help you get started with this. As someone who spend many 
days triaging hundreds of bugs, I would certainly appreciate your 
participation

regards
Rahul

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/HelpWanted
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mentors