Stable Release Updates types proposal (was Re: Fedora Board Meeting Recap 2010-03-11)

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Paul Wouters <paul at xelerance.com> said:
> That might be harsh for some soname updates. Six months is a long time
> to wait on new functionality after upstream released it.

People keep tossing out "six months".  How often is it that a new Fedora
release comes out right before a new upstream, and that upstream is not
already in testing in Fedora?

Why not handle those cases similar to how GNOME and Firefox (and IIRC
OpenOffice.org?) have been handled in the past, where a test/RC release
was in Fedora leading up to the Fedora release, and the "final" upstream
release is pushed as an update (if/when needed)?  Going from test/RC to
final usuaully isn't going to involve major changes (soname bumps, UI
changes, etc.) and so should be an acceptable update to everybody.

You'd be looking at a typical peak of around 5 months between upstream
release and Fedora release, with an average of more like 2-3 months,
which is a lot different from the 6 months that keeps being repeated as
the waiting time for something new.

For example (just an example - please don't take this as picking on
KDE!), KDE 4.4.0 was released on February 9, and F13 is scheduled for
May 11.  That's a 3 month gap, not 6 months.  In my opinion, I don't
think it is entirely unreasonable to wait 3 months for a major new
release.

-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams at hiwaay.net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.