[K12OSN] Release cycle too fast

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2005-04-01 at 05:21, Rob Owens wrote:
>  I
> > for one love to see
> > new features as often as possible, I don't want to
> > wait a year.
> >
> 
> This is something I have never quite understood,
> possibly because I don't have enough programming
> experience.  Why do we need to have a brand new
> release in order to get new features?

The new features in free software come from thousands
of volunteer programmers working on largely unrelated
projects.

> Why can't the
> new features come in the form of updated rpms?  I
> don't think anybody would mind updating rpms--they
> already do it for security updates and it can be set
> in a cron job to do it automatically.

RedHat/fedora have a policy of trying not to change
program behavior in suprising new ways within a
version release of the distribution.  That means someone
other than the original programmer has to pick apart
the code to back in new bug/security fixes and *not*
include the new features.  This is difficult work and
the reason that the fedora project only supports the
most current two releases.

>   But I agree
> that reinstalling the base operating system is a big
> pain in the *** and I'd like to do it as infrequently
> as possible.

In many cases you can do a version upgrade but you
don't quite end up with the same thing so it is better
to re-install, then back in your local changes.  I think the
real key to making it easy to keep up is going to be to put
your /home directories and services that need to keep working
(authentication, email, dns, etc.) on a stable server - Centos 4.0
might be a good choice now,  Then the k12ltsp servers become
easily replaceable application servers with the lts.conf being
the only thing you might change locally.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   les at futuresource.com