> "First even if broken" is a pretty extreme interpretation of "First". > > "First working" is much better - and it fits with the purpose of a > distribution, to make sure that the various pieces are integrated > together (and to help upstream make it happen if necessary). There is no way you can test a constantly changing pool of software packages. As a tester or developer you test a combination X, but you have no way of knowing that an end-user will get the same combination because some other packager somewhere else has pushed an update to another package which might completely invalidate your test. Then again different mirrors in different parts of the world can be syncing at different rates or at different points of time. Which means that different people are being fed randomly different sets of packages. How do I know that the webkitgtk3 that was pushed works with the version of libsoup or gtk3 that is in the repository? I can't because a new libsoup or gtk3 package might have been built while my webkitgtk3 package was still building. Hence this combination of libsoup, gtk3 and webkitgtk3 that we feed the user is totally untested Rawhide quality code. This is why we have freezes. So that we can let things settle down. So that we are reasonably sure that all testers and developers are testing the same set of packages. So that we have sufficient time for testing the whole system. So that we are sure that all users are fed the same set of packages that we tested. It is a bit strange that we freeze before the release, and then move on to a Rawhide like environment where anything can be pushed by anybody at any point in time. We have been working around this by semi-formally co-ordinating all GNOME updates to stable releases. Like all workarounds it is not ideal. We still get bitten by random packager pushing random update that broke a stable distro, or by an update to a package much lower down the stack (say gnutls) that ended up breaking things elsewhere (say telepathy-gabble). Happy hacking, Debarshi -- If computers are going to revolutionize education, then steam engines and cars and electricity would have done it too. -- Arjun Shankar
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