F11 Proposal: Stabilization

[Joshua C.]

2008/11/18 Joshua C. <joshuacov at googlemail.com>:
> 2008/11/18 James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org>:
>> On Tue, 2008-11-18 at 07:41 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>>> On 17.11.2008 23:16, Jon Masters wrote:
>>>  >
>>> > Various other communities (and distributions) have made a
>>> > point out of "stable" releases where the "big ticket" feature is
>>> > stabilization, so I think it would be a win to consider that.
>>>
>>> I disagree: It seems to me a lot of the current Fedora users like the
>>> "latest bells and whistles" style (like you called it in the mail that
>>> started this discussion) I for one really like the steady stream of
>>> kernel-updates, as that greatly improves hardware support over time! On
>>> OpenSuse or Ubuntu you are often forced to run the development branches
>>> when you need newer driver (just like it was in the early Fedora days
>>> and in the RHL days).
>>
>>  Indeed, and someone else wants the latest transmission and someone else
>> the latest pidgin and someone else...
>>  So you either need 100x distributions, or the latest stuff of
>> everything.
>>
>>> > I would personally much
>>> > prefer that stuff that used to work didn't break randomly, and that
>>> > stable Fedora updates wouldn't result in me wondering whether suspend,
>>> > graphics, SELinux, or some other feature that was working was going to
>>> > break today. This isn't actually a rant, more pointing out a necessity.
>>>
>>> Agreed, but I tend to say we should work towards a solution where we can
>>> ship the "latest bells and whistles" and nevertheless provide stability.
>>>
>>> I for one think we need something like that:
>>> https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2008-August/msg00025.html
>>>
>>> The relevant part:
>>>
>>> """
>>> I more and more think that we should consider to switch to a more
>>> rolling release scheme with different usage levels. Roughly something
>>> like the following maybe:
>>>
>>>
>>> Level 1 -- rawhide, similar to how it is today (a bit more stable and
>>> less breakage would be nice, but that's in the works already)
>>>
>>> Level 2pre -- things that got tested in rawhide, that are still young,
>>> but known to work well in rawhide; similar to what updates-testing for
>>> F9 is today;
>>>
>>> Level 2 -- things that worked fine for some time in 2pre; similar to
>>> what F9 is today
>>>
>>> Level 3pre -- things that worked fine for some time in 2
>>>
>>> Level 3 -- things that worked fine for some time in 2pre
>>>
>>>
>>> Level 3pre and 3 are like F8-updates-testing and F8, but with the
>>> difference that everything has to be tested and shipped in level 2 (aka
>>> F9) first.
>>> """
>>
>>  Ok, the above _only_ works if you can convince all the packagers that
>> they should backport fixes ... or you end up with things broken in
>> "Level 2+" until a newer "fixed"¹ package manages to come up through the
>> levels.
>>
>>  This "rolling relases" is roughly what we do with yum releases now, but
>> manually and so doesn't have the backport requirements problems. So if
>> we know that version 123 is pretty good but has a couple of annoying
>> edge case bugs ... we don't release into Fedora 8. Although even then
>> sometimes things get through.
>>  If someone thinks there is something magic that can be done to make
>> releases bug free, they should speak to someone involved in something
>> that was released into Fedora 9 and will be in RHEL-5.3. I know there
>> are a couple of packages that did that. It wasn't magic, but it sure
>> wasn't anything you can easily get people to do for Fedora (IMNSHO).
>>
>>
>> ¹ May contain other bugs.
>>
>> --
>> James Antill <james at fedoraproject.org>
>> Fedora
>>
>> --
>> fedora-devel-list mailing list
>> fedora-devel-list at redhat.com
>> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
>>
> maybe these 2 threads should be merged:
> 1. F11 Proposal: Stabilization
> 2. Proposal - "Slow updates" repo
>

 I like fedora because of the "latest bells and whistles". If
something breaks (and it often does), then it reminds me why i chose
fedora. every new code will always be full of bugs but there are also
other linux distros - (just some of them) opensuse and ubuntu.

this (IMHO) contradicts to the goal of fedora: the "latest bells and whistles".