Testing test releases: do not update

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sun, 22 Feb 2004, shrek-m at gmx.de wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
 
> >let's start simple.  as an example of the testing process, red hat
> >releases a "test" version -- at the moment, that's FC2-t1.  so far, so
> >good.  and red hat obviously wants folks to download, install and beat on 
> >that test release and report bugs/errors/issues/whatever.  it all sounds 
> >so simple,
> 
> testing is not a simple act!

i didn't *say* it was simple, i said (if you'd read it again) that it
*sounds* simple if it's described as i did above.  i wrote that as a 
prelude to the rest of my post, where i went to great pain to point
out that it was anything *but* simple.  sheesh.

> >some of those bugs could be serious enough
> 
> who will claim "serious enough" ?
> if you never use samba i bet that you are not interested in this bugs

oh, come on, get a grip.  i think my point was pretty clear.  testing
should uncover bugs that are annoying or crippling enough that they should
be patched for the sake of testers being able to make more progress.  it
doesn't matter if *some* people don't use samba.  it's clear that if
someone finds a serious bug in samba during testing, it should be patched
if possible so the people who *are* testing it can continue.

this sort of update is clearly different from, say, upgrading from KDE 
3.1.5 to 3.2, for example, which would be proposed just for getting new
features.  are you seriously suggesting that you don't recognize the 
fundamental difference between upgrading because you want a new package 
with newer features, and upgrading to fix a significant bug?

from what i've read so far, the consensus is that testers are encouraged
to update against rawhide and to file bug reports on all of those updates.  
i think that's a silly idea.  it's silly because rawhide is defined as the 
repository for the latest, greatest, still-wet releases of software that 
have absolutely no guarantee of working and, IMHO, it's does a disservice 
to testers to ask for their time to test, and then give them what is 
essentially a moving target.

however, it's obvious that i'm thoroughly outvoted, so i'll just defer to 
the majority.

rday