Responsibility for rebuilding dependent components, was: F-16 Branched report: 20110920 changes

[Miloslav Trmač]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 04:52:28PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> On 09/20/2011 04:37 PM, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> >What the maintainers could have done is not upload a package that breaks
>> >binary compatibility into a distribution that's attempting to stabalise
>> >for release.
>>
>> That's a way too simplistic view - It's simply that other processes
>> (upstream release cycles, upstream release processes, package
>> maintainer's time slots, etc.) are not in sync with Fedora's cycles
>> and that Fedora's wanna-be QA's delay slots are severely adding to
>> the already existing problems.
>
> You're not obliged to upload the latest upstream. It's very practical to
> simply not do so.

So when _is_ a good time to do binary-incompatible changes to libraries?

* It's not after beta freeze, because they are unwanted at that time

* It's not 14 days before beta freeze, because they won't get out of
updates-testing in time

* It's not 14 days + 3 (4?) weeks before beta freeze - even if the
library gets out of updates-testing in time, its users may not be
rebuilt because the maintainer is on vacation.

* What if there are two layers of users that need to be rebuilt?

The delays just pile one upon another...
   Mirek