unfrozen repo somewhere?

[Horst H. von Brand]

Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 22:38 -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> > Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > > On Sun, 2008-09-28 at 14:31 -0400, Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> > > > Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:
> > > > > On Fri, 2008-09-26 at 11:11 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> > > > > > I understand why rawhide should be frozen at some points,

> > > > > Openly said, I don't understand this. To me, these freezes are a
> > > > > defect in Rel-Eng's procedures, which could easily be overcome,
> > > > > if they wanted to.

> > > > What Rel-Eng wants is that the rawhide snapshot that Is To Be
> > > > Fedora-<next> gets beaten to a pulp by us rawhideans. Yes, I'd also
> > > > like for the rollercoaster ride to continue, but there is no way
> > > > around that us crazy bunch needs a little gentle leading to help
> > > > out stabilize the next release. Plus I can imagine that most (all?) 
> > > > developers are concentrating on that job, so there are not many
> > > > hands free to work of pushing the envelope forward in any case.

> > > What I would like to see it Rel-Eng to adopt the development
> > > principles, most other developments apply:
> > > 
> > > Decouple "product development" (here: FC<N+1>) development from
> > > bleeding edge "unstable/experimental" "head development" (here:
> > > rawhide).

> > Needs more hands. Starves the "product development" of developers and
> > testers.

> I don't see this - To the contrary. I feel the current model is driving
> away developers and testers, esp. packagers.

Any hard (or even mushy) data to support this?

> >  Was the idea in Linux before 2.6, was abandoned for exactly the
> > above reasons.

> ... but it is the idea which is being applied almost anywhere else.

Examples?

> Ask yourself: Is the current development model in Fedora a success?

Need to define what "success" means... if it is keeping a very popular,
solid distribution moving forward, and gathering more packages, I'd have to
say it is.

> I don't think so.

How do you define "success" then? Where is Fedora lacking? No, this is not
just making noise, I'm really interested in the answer.

> - Fedora releases essentially are rawhide snapshots. Packages from
> rawhide automatically become "stable" (Lack of "rawhide/testing"). E.g.
> I have package upgrades pending, I currently don't want to push to
> Fedora, because I fear them to be too unstable for a product.

Then they should go to rawhide? Go into your local, testers-only repo? Stay
in koji, and be advertised somewhere?

> - Fedora's release process starves package development. E.g. I have
> several (upstream) package upgrades pending, I can't push to Fedora
> because to the freezes are permanently interfering.

Please elaborate. Freezes are far in between, it would be phenomenal bad
luck if many important upstream just happen to fall into those. And those
can presumably be applied after the freeze is lifted. 

> - rawhide is too volatile to be usable for many testers, esp. packagers
> testing their packages.

What packages are we talking about? For rawhide's instability to be of very
much impact, the package development would have to be as fast as rawhide's,
or the package have a lot of tendrils reaching into all nooks and cranies
of the system.

Heck, rawhide is stable enough for me to use as a regular workstation (with
some precautions), how would that be /so/ different than deoing development
work? Besides, building/testing/stabilizing your packages on Fedora current
practically /guarantees/ that by the time the work is finished it is
completely irrelevant, as Fedora has moved on into the blue beyond by then.

> - The current process introduces a bloated bureaucracy to work around
> the side-effects of "not-branches".

Please elaborate. I'm sure the people involved would love to get that
workload diminished...
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
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