Rawhide nodebug and the 3.12 kernel

[Adam Williamson]

On Wed, 2013-11-06 at 15:37 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 6, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Wed, 2013-11-06 at 08:00 -0600, Justin M. Forbes wrote:
> >> We have a slight issue with the 3.12 kernel timing in that it is too
> >> late to push it into Fedora 20, but too far away from the Fedora 20
> >> release to just ignore the 3.13 development cycle until we can push
> >> 3.12. As a result, we will be tracking 3.12 and stable updates for it in
> >> the rawhide-nodebug repository. This gives us a chance to keep it built
> >> and tested on all primary architectures, and make sure we are in good
> >> shape to push 3.12 out as an update as soon as possible. Once 3.12 can
> >> be pushed to releases, the rawhide-nodebug repository will return to
> >> doing non debug builds of rawhide, tracking Linus' tree upstream. I will
> >> let everyone know that is happening through the same channels with a
> >> couple of days notice.
> >>
> >> More information on the rawhide-nodebug repository can be found at:
> >> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/RawhideKernelNodebug
> >
> > FWIW the ship has probably sailed now, but I really don't think it'd be
> > much of a problem to have 3.12 in F20 at release time. It's what I've
> > been running on my F20 box here for the last several weeks anyway, and
> > based on my testing it's unlikely to cause us any particular problems.
> 
> I literally just screamed.
> 
> The past 3 releases we've been pointedly reminded by QA that when
> doing fixes they should be scoped to as small as possible.  So we've
> been trying really hard to do that during the Alpha and the Beta
> freezes.  And now you want to ship a Beta (which gets the widest
> testing feedback of the pre-releases) with 3.11, and shove 3.12 in
> after that as the F20 release kernel?
> 
> It could be the massive amount of email and meetings today addling my
> brain, but can you explain how that makes sense?

Sorry, on re-reading that it could've been clearer =)

By 'the ship has probably sailed now' I meant 'beta's almost done'. I
was trying to say we could probably have safely got it in before Beta
(though, admittedly, we didn't know we were going to slip two weeks...)
I wasn't really suggesting any change, just noting that 3.12's actually
fine for F20 atm if anyone feels like using it.

The other funny thing is that the kernel is actually a relatively
reliable component, even though it's so vital, because a) it's usually
pretty damn obvious if anything terrible is wrong and b) it's
extensively and competently tested upstream. I'd actually be _less_
concerned about changing the kernel post-beta than changing, say, I
dunno, NetworkManager (not to pick on NM, just an example, many things
are in the same boat). Still, I'm entirely fine with sticking with 3.11
and happy the kernel team is considering stability/quality in making
that choice.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net