What Fedora makes sucking for me - or why I am NOT Fedora

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 18:51 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 11:48:04PM +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> >On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 23:20 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> >> Le mercredi 10 décembre 2008 à 22:46 +0100, Ralf Corsepius a écrit :
> >> 
> >> > ... then wait until your immature and hardly tested "new code" from
> >> > "rawhide" automatically becomes the "release".
> >> > 
> >> > FC10 clearly demonstrates this effect.
> >> 
> >> I don't think this is fair to releng and the QA teams. 
> >Why is this not fair? The technical facts on FC10 speak for themselves: 
> >Rawhide and Fedora's release procedures as means for "Fedora release
> >preparation testing" don't work out.
> 
> Examples of this? 

Some random examples, which I have been hit myself:

gnome-session: Currently doesn't provide "session save/restore"
  Official excuse: in process of a rewrite. 
  IMO, the current status should never have been released.

evolution: Suffers from many tiny issues, e.g.:
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472640
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472638
  How could these escape a QA? The FC10 version is bugged as evolution
  had been in its worst times. 

mkinitrd/kernel: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=470628
  Minor issue, however it escapes me how such a highly visible bug 
  this could escape a "Fedora's testing group".

PackageKit: A trouble area of its own.
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=469293
  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=469324
  IMO, PackageKit is too immature and has been prematurely rushed out.

To me, 
* the gnome-session, evolution and PackageKit examples are cases
demonstrating how "bugged SW", which should never have been made part of
a release, migrates from rawhide into releases.
* all 4 cases are demonstrating that rawhide as a release testing
platform doesn't work out.


Wrt. rel-eng:

Besides the numerous NEVR issues between Fedora release, which FC10 (as
usual) suffers from, this time another kind of repo screw up took place:

updates/10 contains packages with an older NEVR than Everything and
Fedora, e.g.:
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/smolt-1.1.1.1-9.fc10.noarch.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/smolt-server-1.1.1.1-9.fc10.noarch.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/kazehakase-base-0.5.6-1.fc10.1.i386.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/kazehakase-webkit-0.5.6-1.fc10.1.i386.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/kazehakase-hyperestraier-0.5.6-1.fc10.1.i386.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/kazehakase-0.5.6-1.fc10.1.i386.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/smolt-firstboot-1.1.1.1-9.fc10.noarch.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/kazehakase-ruby-0.5.6-1.fc10.1.i386.rpm
releases/10/Everything/i386/os/Packages/smolt-gui-1.1.1.1-9.fc10.noarch.rpm
updates/10/i386/kazehakase-webkit-0.5.6-1.fc10.i386.rpm
updates/10/i386/kazehakase-hyperestraier-0.5.6-1.fc10.i386.rpm
updates/10/i386/smolt-firstboot-1.1.1.1-8.fc10.noarch.rpm
updates/10/i386/smolt-server-1.1.1.1-8.fc10.noarch.rpm
updates/10/i386/smolt-1.1.1.1-8.fc10.noarch.rpm
updates/10/i386/kazehakase-0.5.6-1.fc10.i386.rpm
updates/10/i386/kazehakase-base-0.5.6-1.fc10.i386.rpm
updates/10/i386/smolt-gui-1.1.1.1-8.fc10.noarch.rpm
updates/10/i386/kazehakase-ruby-0.5.6-1.fc10.i386.rpm

Admitted, this is a minor issue without impact on users, nevertheless it
raises questions.


>  Do you have bug report numbers, regression cases,
> or any sort of data saying things are getting worse from a release
> stability perspective?
> 
> I'm not saying you're wrong, but statements without facts are hard
> to swallow.  If we're sucking it up, point us to where and how so
> things can be fixed.  I have F10 on a number of machines and it's
> working fine, so my personal experience may be different than yours.
Let me put it this way: I have been running machines equipped with FC10
since ca. Beta2, and am busy filing bugs since then. I haven't been
bookkeeping, but it's in the order of 0.5-1 per day.

Ralf