unfrozen repo somewhere?

[Les Mikesell]

Horst H. von Brand wrote:
> 
>> The big problem for me is that it's a package deal.  I wouldn't mind
>> beta testing a few apps at a time on my working system with a stable
>> OS and libraries, but to run them you also have to take an
>> experimental kernel and device drivers.  And my history with those on
>> fedora is that I waste too much time getting the hardware to work with
>> new versions. Maybe that's changed...   If you had a way to separate
>> the apps from the OS, you might find people more willing to test the
>> parts that interested them.
> 
> Many problems are integration problems, i.e., package version foo doesn't
> work with library version bar. It also happens that to run the very
> latest-and-greatest version of the package you need experimental(ish)
> versions of other stuff.

Hence my initial suggestion of a ready-to-run, fully integrated vmware 
image that anyone with a working mac, windows, or linux can fire up 
nondestructively with no install or prep work.

>> Kernels that don't boot on machines where the last version worked
> 
> Keep the next-to-last one around just in case. Have a LiveCD of the lastest
> stable/beta at hand for the case it gets too screwed up. Yes, it's a
> nuisance.

If you want lots of testers, make it not a nuisance, safe, and 
non-destructive.

>> But would you want to test a plane where the engineers said it was
>> probably good enough and didn't crash too often?
> 
> So you have never heard of plane crashes?

Yes, have you heard of simulators where you can do the preliminary 
testing without danger?  That's what vmware provides.

> Or other failures? In the end, as
> 100% perfect is not realistically doable, you have to make do with "good
> enough", and what /that/ means depends on the circumstances: The kernel of
> a game console (a crash means a minor inconvenience or at most a lost game)
> has /very/ different safety/security requirements than software controlling
> a radiation therapy aparatus (which could very well be lethal to the
> patient).

The circumstances are that vmware server/player is free, as is a timed 
demo of fusion for the mac.  A crash inside of vmware isn't even a minor 
inconvenience to the host.  And as fast as fedora betas change, it would 
probably take less bandwidth and certainly less user time to keep fully 
updated ready-to-run images available instead of making users download 
isos than need installation and then updates.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com