[csw-maintainers] stable release?

[Ben Walton]

Excerpts from Peter Bonivart's message of Wed Oct 14 16:44:50 -0400 2009:

> That freeze also affected unstable for some reason. We were
> basically not being able to release anything for weeks. If were
> going to revive this corpse we should still be able to release to
> current.

I agree that a freeze shouldn't be a 'stop the world' event.  You're
using 'current' as we commonly do now, as in 'where Phil puts
packages'?  If this is still open for business during a freeze then
there would need to be some intermediary (a staging area) between
stable and current.  It should start as a snapshot of current.
Updates to the snapshot should be of only two types:

1. Update to fix open bugs on the package so it can be moved into stable.
2. Removal so packages don't go to stable.

> Also, we should ask ourselves what's the most important thing for
> the users? Is it really stability which we hardly can guarantee or
> is it just a frozen state? Many sync our mirrors from time to time
> with no interest in having the latest and greatest, most important
> to them is that every machine gets the same version.

I think there is merit to this view, but I also think that Phil is
right too.  It will be dependent on the user/site.  Even though I run
current/ on my own boxes, I'm always a little nervous of large
updates.  We've seen some fairly high visibility breakages recently
that would really stink on production machines.

> We're a small organization and to put all the work James did onto
> someone else, even if shared by a few, is not time well spent in my
> opinion. We should rethink this, not just start it up again. It died
> for a reason.

Suggestions?  I haven't been through this before, so I'm a fresh slate
in this regard.  Personally, if I knew that stable/ was moving forward
at a regular interval, I'd probably run most of my boxes from it,
leaning toward the stability side rather than the standardized
versions side.  As it is, I run current since that's where I can get
lots of things that I want on all my machines that aren't part of
stable.

One thing I'd suggest is to only aim for 2 stable releases per year.
More than that and too much time is spent in freeze states, I think.

As a quick straw poll, what sort of major issues are people dealing
with in their packages right now that would see you personally
withhold the package from a stable release?

[I'm considering Phil's "offer" of pushing this forward...]

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

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