"Tick-tock" release cadence?

[Michel Alexandre Salim]

On 12/05/2014 01:32 AM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> As a user/re-mixer, I don't like it. I'm at the point now where I need
> a rolling release. I can live with a six-month or eight-month lag
> between desktop updates, but I can't live without regular updates to R
> and R packages, PostgreSQL/PostGIS, QGIS, the Python data science
> tools, etc. And I'm running the Developer Edition of Firefox, which
> updates almost every day.
> 
> There's only one major distro now with a calendar-driven release
> cadence, and quite frankly I don't know how they do it. Everyone else
> is either rolling, try for calendar but don't ship if it's fatally
> broken (Fedora and openSUSE), or ship when it's solid and stable and
> supportable (Debian and RHEL).
> 
> I'm probably going to run at least one of my machines on Rawhide after
> the F21 release, but I think the "sweet spot" is what openSUSE has
> done - a stable release with a nominal eight-month cycle and a rolling
> release (Tumbleweed) layered over that. I'd like Fedora to at least
> consider something similar.
>

Minor version updates are allowed by the update policy, and packages
like Firefox are in effect on a rolling release anyway. I believe R is
also updated quite regularly.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Updates_Policy#All_other_updates

Do we have the manpower for a Tumbleweed-style repo that is built
against the stable release as its core? Or perhaps the present upgrade
policy is sufficient, and the lack of updates Ed cite is already a
reflection of a lack of available manpower to update the packages he
mentioned (apart from PostgreSQL, where we wouldn't want to upgrade
mid-release).

Ed, could you perhaps cite specific R and Python tools where you find
the current version to be insufficiently up-to-date?

We could perhaps create a tracker for update requests, and provide a
Bugzilla template for it linked to from the package database and from
the Fedora homepage - that way we could prioritize what packages users
really want updated.


Best regards,

-- 
Michel Alexandre Salim
Fedora Project Contributor: http://fedoraproject.org/

Email:  salimma at fedoraproject.org  | GPG key ID: A36A937A
IDs:    keybase.io/michel-slm      | IRC: michel_slm at irc.freenode.net

()  ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail
/\  www.asciiribbon.org   - against proprietary attachments

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 473 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/attachments/20141206/e98ed1d0/attachment.sig>