Fedora Core 1 Test Update: gnome-panel-2.4.2-1

[Leonard den Ottolander]

Hi Mark,

>   + Move onto FC2 and hammer on that. I think its much more important
>     to focus on getting the next release right rather than spending
>     too much time on little issues in the last release.

Yes, but as said fixing FC1 might benefit FC2.

Also I am not particularly fond of the idea to "leave a mess behind
while rushing to the next release", as people might be somewhat
reluctant to shift to FC2 instantly. There are numerous people still
running on RHL 9 who haven't even shifted to FC1 yet. I think in general
fixing bugs for the current release benefits the upcoming release. F.e.
the case of the invalid UTF-8 which seems to be needed to be forward
ported to gnome-panel-2.5.3. Really, there are still issues that were
reported for RH 6.2 that still have a bearing on the upcoming Fedora
Core 2.

Also personally I like the idea to be able to still have a few months to
enjoy a more functional desktop with FC1 before having to switch to FC2.
I do agree that splitting of a devel package at this stage is not
necessary for that, but you should have included the BuildRequires while
you were working on the update.

>  FC test2
>     devel freeze is this coming Friday and I'd much prefer to see
>     things fixed for that release rather than an FC1 update.

I hadn't realized this to be so soon already. That somewhat changes were
to put (y)our focus of course. Still it doesn't seem to be much extra
work to split of a devel package for both branches. But see above.

> 	So, I'm new to Fedora - but I think that's probably fairly close
> representation of the entire project's focus right now.

I understand that Fedora is Red Hat's development branch, but that
doesn't mean some community effort can be put in stabilizing the current
release. Apart from working on I sometimes like to work with my system,
and that means I sometimes decide to wait a little before upgrading.

With Fedora Core 1 I spent quite some time on the test releases, but I
have decided I will not do that for FC2. Although I like the idea to be
using a 2.6 kernel in the foreseeable future I believe we can afford
ourselves to take enough time to get out a stable FC2 and stabilize FC1
in the mean time. Core 1 was somewhat of a messy release (I still see
serious crashes in important applications, issues that might be masked
but not fixed by rushing to yet another release), and setting the
deadlines too tightly is not helping in that sense. I don't mind to work
hard, but I hate to rush, as it usually leads to poor results. Red Hat
has just released it's Enterprise 3, so lets breathe and fix issues at
their roots, not their branches. And surely I applaud all the effort
people put into FC2.

> 	I do really appreciate your work on gnome-panel, but it would be much
> more effective if we were both focused on the same thing.

I think there is no issue here. If you decide to split off a devel
branch for FC2 only, so be it. If you decide not to include the
BuildRequires into this update for FC1 then I can find that a bad
decision, but tough luck for me. I'll just continue gathering open
issues for a while, and all in all we will achieve the closure of a lot
of outstanding bugs, and the update to a gnome-panel with a working
drawer and hardly any auto hide issues.

Leonard.

-- 
mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research