[csw-maintainers] stable release?

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Philip Brown's message of Wed Oct 14 14:58:08 -0400 2009:

> This sounds simple. But in practice, it has in the past, involved a
> large chunk of packages sitting in "current", not actually making it
> into a particular date's "stable" release.

So then, for purposes of a starting marker, a helpful thing to do
would be to say: as of date X, any new packages are not eligible for
transition from current/ to stable/ in the next release.  This would
be similar to the Debian release freeze, I believe.  Bug fixes are the
only eligible changes to packages after the freeze.  Without this
freeze, there is no chance of making a stable release where all
packages meet the criteria.

If we were to set October 31st as the date after which new packages
couldn't enter the next stable, record the current list of packages in
current/ and then look at the bug list, would this be a good start?

> Then, the more packages that are excluded, then make a potential for
> other packages being excluded because of dependancies, which make for
> more headaches for the stable release manager.

Are we relying on mantis for this info?

> Not to mention the additional headaches of going around bugging
> people, "Hey, fix your bugs so we can have your package released to
> stable"!

Having users jump ship because we've Debianized our release process to
a glacial pace isn't fun either! :)  I don't have numbers, but I bet
there are lots of shops really wondering where the stable release is
at this point...

I could dedicate some cycles to whip cracking if it would help.  I
can't (and don't want to) shoulder the entire load myself, so help
from others would be appreciated.

Thanks
-Ben
-- 
Ben Walton
Systems Programmer - CHASS
University of Toronto
C:416.407.5610 | W:416.978.4302

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