The question of rolling release?

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 01/26/2012 06:51 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:15:01 -0500
> Mark Bidewell<mbidewel at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> I just had a conversation which I believe sheds some light on the
>> problem which a rolling release is trying to solve. The example is
>> Ubuntu bu you could apply the same to Fedora/RHEL.
>>
>> My coworker wants to use Ubuntu LTS for development on Heroku.  He
>> wants the stability of an LTS, but he needs a later version of Ruby to
>> run the Heroku tools.  He has found that there is not supported way to
>> upgrade Ruby short of recompiling Ruby or upgrading his entire system.
>>   Because of this he has returned to developing on OS X which handles
>> the Ruby upgrade.
> ...snip...
>
> This is the age old LTS 'use case'.
>
> I want:
>
> * A super stable platform.
>
> * Backporting security fixes only and tons of testing and care.
>
> * Minimal updates, only the backported security fixes after massive
>    testing.
>
> oh, and:
>
> * The very latest git head of php, python, ruby, or some other very
>    very specific component.
>
> The problem here is that these are opposite goals. And they are also
> exclusive... ie, I might want the very latest php and nothing else, but
> $otheruser may want stable php but the latest ruby.
>
> It's hard to win here. ;)

This solution to such use-cases actually is quite simple:

Use one of these "stable"/"LTS"/"stagnating" distros as basis and build 
those packages you have special needs for yourself.

If you want to do this cleanly, start packaging these packages as rpms 
(rsp. debs in Ubuntu). In some cases you may as well find some 3rd party 
repos, which already does this.

Ralf