Hello Michael, Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 1:23:59 PM, you wrote: >> On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 13:08:48 -0500, Al wrote: >> I want more updates. I want them to be more frequent, incremental and >> each reasonably well tested. Trying to do too many changes at a time >> not only leads to an increased likelihood of error, it makes it much >> harder to determine which update caused a particular issue >> (regression, or simple behaviour change). > Then you need to evaluate the software at a lower level, though, instead > of waiting for official releases. You get incremental changes only if you > examine snapshots of the source code as found in a project's vcs. > Upstream next official release may contain too many changes already. > Even minor releases break badly sometimes, if a developer decided to > rewrite code sections. My point is that too many developers fall into the trap of adding too many changes (fixes, or enhancements) within a given set of changes (been there, done that, learned the hard lessions in multiple x00 KLOC projects). The route to sanity is to ensure that each set of changes is tested adequately (by the developer, and in real world conditions by the end users) before moving on to the next set of changes. The trap that many of the "release it every 6 months" folks fall into is the illusion that somehow this contains the damage. Often, it means that Fedora ends up staggering under heavy impacts as enormous changes are periodically (at release boundaries) thrown over the wall to the end users, like heavy rocks launched by trebuchet. >> I want a Fedora playground that is up-to-date (not quite rawhide, but >> supported if I find an issue). I am willing to accept a reasonable >> amount of risk, churn and extra effort as part of the cost of >> receiving those extra updates. The primary benefit to me is seeing new >> features and bug fixes in a useful timeframe. > There are packagers, who won't like to take such a risk in released > versions of Fedora, however. I would oppose also a policy that forced me to > upgrade to latest releases without a technical requirement/rationale. Their choice. They should know their codebase, and userbase. They have to measure the risks in real time, realistically. IMO, holding back a change too long can have a large negative impact. Making the change under controlled conditions (at least some active users testing and blessing each change with karma) might have better results. I would point out that many fedora users only work with released versions of Fedora. I would hope the latest release gets some love from the developers for a reasonable period (4-5 months) rather than an instantaneous switch of focus to the development release just as the users are coming online. One can argue that older releases should get fewer changes, but perhaps as the KDE folks have argued that means the difference between some changes or no change. In the end, it is their package, their choices, effort and the results will judged by their end-users - ungrateful lot that we might be. BTW, I'm a Gnome user, but support individual choice, Al -- Best regards, Al mailto:al.dunsmuir@xxxxxxxxxxxx -- devel mailing list devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel
