Quoting Justin W <jlist@xxxxxxxxxx>:
> Dave Ihnat wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 22, 2006 at 10:32:16AM -0500, Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy wrote:
> >
> >> Basically, AFAIU, you get major version upgrades. For example, FC5 has
> >> GNOME 2.14 as the main Desktop. FC6 has 2.16.
> >> FC5 is not going to get 2.16. Ever. It will only get updates for minor
> >> versions.
> >>
> >
> > I think what he's getting at is, why do big-bang releases instead of
> simply
> > continually releasing updates via an automatic mechanism such as yum?
> >
> > This model has had its proponents over the years. Probably the biggest
> > reasons you have major releases are:
> >
> > o A major release gives someone new to the product line a starting point
> > that isn't horrendously out of date. Ever have to reinstall a copy
> > of Windows XP from CD, then live through hours of updates?
well why wouldn't a respin take care of that? granted a big download would be
needed, user intervention would be infrequent, easing the job.
a single download, even if large is easier under common circumstances tha
> >
> >
> In my experience though, you *do* have to sit through hours of updates:
> the first few months of a release are so hectic with bug fixes that you
> end up downloading nearly an entire CD's worth of information in updates
> to what you just installed. I can do this because I have DSL that can
> run for hours downloading everything, but it won't work for anyone on
> dialup.
>
> That brings me to a related question I've wondered for some time: why do
> we have to download entire packages for updates? Why can't there be an
> RPM package similar to patches? Then you'd only have to download the
> difference in a package (and I don't mean a partial file, but just whole
> files that have been updates. Most files don't get too large
> individually). I would see where this could be a problem if we didn't
> have new Fedora Core releases, but since we do, the patch RPMs would
> only have to be based off the initial package of that version release.
> If any patch RPMs are needed before a particular patch RPM could be
> installed, I don't really see why it would be a problem for the patch
> RPM's spec file to include a list of dependency patches (much like
> packages already do) and have yum automatically download them too.
>
> Justin W
> > [snip]
o Some changes to the system are so major, affecting underlying
functionality, structure, etc., that they're simply too difficult or
complex to reliably handle as a dynamic update.
ok a respin would deal with that too
o Having major releases allows the update process to sunset support for
old versions of software. Over the years, having to detect and
handle every single version of a package that was ever released to
properly handle updates would become a nightmare. Add in dependency
detection, and, well...
but isn't sunsetting of sw the issue? "over the years" is currently "over the
months", no? If a known and reasonable lifetime (three years for example) is not
manageable maybe we ought to look at valuing reliability as a higher priority in
design as opposed to fast coding and user-borne QA. We don't need the MS model
here...
Dave
> >
> > Cheers,
> > --
> > Dave Ihnat
> > President, DMINET Consulting, Inc.
> > dihnat@xxxxxxxxxx
> >
>
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