Rolling release model philosophy (was Re: Anaconda is totally trashing the F18 schedule (was Re: f18: how to install into a LVM partitions (or RAID)))

[Tom Lane]

Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> writes:
> On Fri, 2012-11-02 at 17:53 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>> I've seen a whole lot of user demand for *more* stable versions of
>> Fedora.  I've seen none whatever for less stable versions.

> Perhaps I ought to be more clear. I think we can maintain the level of
> *actual* stability our current 'stable' releases provide with a model
> such as I describe, while substantially reducing the amount of resources
> we're wasting at least _theoretically_ maintaining up to four releases
> at once (currently, 16, 17, 18 and 19).

Well, maybe, but yeah you weren't very clear about that.  In any case,
I'm not seeing how we handle things like library ABI breaks with a
rolling release model ... at least not without more work, rather than
less, than we have now.

> If you're using a Fedora release today you're _already_ fighting OS bugs
> more often than most people do, I'd say.

I don't buy that really.  I hit very few bugs in Fedora -- fewer than
in OS X for instance.  Possibly this is because I use it as a headless
server as much as possible, and thus avoid bugs in the desktop-related
code.  As a development platform it's remarkably stable.  (Now
admittedly, I never run rawhide, and generally wait till a month after
"official release" before updating my main workstation to a new Fedora
version.  But with those simple precautions, it is very stable.)

			regards, tom lane