Rolling release model philosophy (was Re: Anaconda is totally trashing the F18 schedule (was Re: f18: how to install into a LVM partitions (or RAID)))

[Kevin Fenzi]

On Sat, 03 Nov 2012 09:26:43 -0700
Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:

> I don't think rolling release and getting work done are incompatible.
> As I mentioned, I run Branched permanently on my desktop - so it
> rolls from 'pre-Alpha' state through to 'stable' state briefly and
> then back to 'pre-Alpha' again, on a constant loop - and I do almost
> all my work on that. We could build a light rolling-release distro
> that was substantially more reliable than that. 

But I think that might be a non representative case. Before branched
happens currently you get all the stuff like: Mass rebuilds, major
upgrades that take a bunch of work to get all done, etc. So, you might
not be considering them in your view above... but if we were rolling
then you would have to deal with new boost, or png changing, or rpm
format changing, etc, and there is seldom a way to cut these up into
smaller bits. 

So, in a rolling release when say png changes, we would have to push
all that change out to users in a big chud. They would have to do them
somewhat quickly if they wanted any updates that would be depending on
it/behind it. 

> Again, my fundamental
> point is that we could achieve a sufficient level of reliability for
> Fedora's purposes - the same level of reliability we currently
> achieve, which I think the kinds of people we're talking about are
> happy with - on a lighter release model than 'do a "stable release"
> every six months come hell or high water' or 'three-track rolling,
> Debian style, with a very slow-moving "stable" track'.

I'm not convinced. ;) 

In any case, I think we do need to look at release cycle changes or at
the very least Feature process revamp. 

kevin
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