Linux multi-boot release criterion discussion, redux

[Adam Williamson]

On Sat, 2014-11-08 at 08:45 -0500, Gene Czarcinski wrote:

> Before discussion any criteria for whatever release, perhaps there 
> should be a discussion on how we would like things to work and what we 
> really do not care about.  Also, I believe that the appropriate place 
> for this discussion is the anaconda-devel list and/or 
> devel at lists.fedoraproject.org [or, perhaps both].

We already did that, extensively. What I'm trying to do is propose a
fairly minimum criterion that would be a *baseline* everyone can agree
on, so we can at least get something added. As I wrote, I think cmurf is
planning to re-propose his more extensive idea.

I sent the proposal to a-d-l as well, but test@ is the 'official' place
for criterion discussions.

> Also, is this just a grub2 issue or does it also apply to extlinux?

My proposal does not.

> Also, I would like to see the merits of directly booting other 
> installations (linux/initrd) versus configfile chaining.

Release criteria are about functionality, not about implementation.
That's an entirely separate discussion, which *would* make sense on
a-d-l.

> Another point that would clarify things for me concerns 
> linux16/initrd16.  Other than it is the "latest and greatest, just what 
> features/capabilities does linux/initrd (32 bit) offer that is not 
> available in linux16/initrd16?

Again irrelevant to a criterion discussion.

> Once we know what goal we are aimed at and what we are ignoring, then we 
> can establish some bounds and release criteria. 

I guess I don't quite see it that way. "What goal we're aimed at" is
exactly what a criterion *is*: a functional requirement. What you're
talking about above is not about 'goals', it's about
technical/implementation details. These can have some impact on criteria
- it's obviously absurd to write a requirement that is not technically
achievable - but in general I don't see that we need to get into the
nitty gritty of grub's alternative loader implementations in order to
decide whether we want to set a release criterion for basic stock
configuration multi-boot.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
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