Testing Test Releases

[Wayne Frazee]

[snip]
> as it stands, FC2-t1 was shipped with yum.conf pointing at rawhide.  and
> what a bad idea that was.  as more than one person has pointed out,
> rawhide represents the latest, greatest, bleeding edge,
> not-even-guaranteed-to-work software.  why on earth would anyone ship a
> test system which is set up to update against rawhide?  (rick johnson
> above claims that red hat actually *recommends* people update against
> rawhide.  say what?  given that at least one other poster has emphasized
> that stuff in rawhide isn't even guaranteed to work?  i think someone
> needs to get their story straight.  but, onward.)

>From the Fedora Project website:
"It is also a proving ground for new technology that may eventually make its
way into Red Hat products."

>From the Fedora Project Objectives:
"Be on the leading edge of open source technology, by adopting and helping
develop new features and version upgrades."

Rawhide is being assessed because it is new technology and making a test of
it for speed comparison and possible bugs makes a hell of a lot more sense
with a test release than it does just throwing it into a production build.
The test1 makes an ideal platform to test rawhide.  Right, right now rawhide
isnt guarenteed to work.  If it breaks on you or messes up, report it.
Thats what this TEST is all about.

> in order to make the testing process as useful as possible, one would
> think that red hat wants to at least partially control how far someone can
> deviate from the initial FC2-t1 install.  testers should be able to update
> to fix identified and known bugs, that makes sense.  but what's the point
> of updating against rawhide?  it would make far more sense to have just an
> "update" repo for test releases, representing just those packages that
> were found to be broken.  if, instead, you update against rawhide, it
> would seem you've so contaminated your original system, can you even call
> it FC2-t1 anymore?
[snip]

How would you suggest to define development builds?  Just put everything
against the core?  Zero version control?  Issue some sort of arbitrary
version identifier with each update which then has to be included with
bugzilla reports?

Wayne S. Frazee
(#Fedora user: wfrazee)