lifespan and lifecycle

[Vitaly Kuznetsov]

Matthew Miller <mattdm at fedoraproject.org> writes:

> One of the general questions that's coming up across the working groups is
> product lifecycle. We should talk about what we would like to see for the
> Fedora cloud.
>
> I often hear that a longer lifecycle would be beneficial, and if Fedora as a
> whole goes for that I think we would take advantage, but more important, I
> think, is the ability to move to a newer version without hassle --
> application stack works on one version and also on the next, or at least
> only requires minor changes.

I think we're kinda unique here in Fedora cloud: our 'lifecycle'
understanding is slightly different from "How long can I keep installed
system without scary upgrade procedure". Cloud instances tend to live
short but exciting life. What we need to do is to simplify 'switch'
procedure for our users, e.g. yesterday user was using F19 image for his
tasks and today he switched to F20. How can we lower the pain?
I would suggest the following:
1) We stick to Fedora's basic lifecycle, no bold moves required.
2) We provide 'support' for all supported Fedora releases (not only the
latest one) by doing regular image builds including all current updates.
3) We try to identify and fix 'cloud image API' (package set, basic
behavour, ...) across all Fedora releases and try to make changes
'conservative'.
4) We try to identify reasons why users tend to stick to particular
Fedora version instead of using the current one. Let's treat any report
like 'my workflow is broken with new version' as a bug.
5) (I've already suggested that once) Let's work on providing our users
with infrastructure for building their own images. Infrastructure is
better than tools.

>
> I also _really_ think we need to do periodic respins including updates, and
> we could possibly call these point releases. I think monthly would be ideal
> but every 3 months might be a more managable bite.

Why can't this process be fully automated? Let's think about it as 'yum
update is forbidden for cloud images, running fresh image is the only
way of doing updates'. Are we ok with updates once in 3 month? I don't
think so.

Just my $0.02. But I'm ready to participate in any 'automation'
activities.

-- 
  Vitaly Kuznetsov