Denis,
This is wonderful news!
The most direct and immediate problem is the question of how the
betas are to be distributed to the beta testers. This is
particularly acute since beta3 is now at 999MB in size.
I cannot see any way of avoiding the initial download of that much
data, other than mailing out CDs, but for V90 access it is a killer
(gone from 50 hours to 77 hours, all going perfectly). I thing
most V90 beta testers will have little option but to walk away.
Distribution by iso images is NOT practical yet for people without CD
burners or inadequate disk space. So you will lose another major
group of beta testers, unless the ability to install directly from
the two iso images (does not yet exist) is made available.
That aside, a concerted effort should be made to devise an efficient
beta update distribution process. I strongly recomment rsync, since
it will make updates within files (such as iso images) practical,
using an absolute minimum of server and client bandwidth. This makes
keeping up to date quite practical for the V90-equipped beta
testers. However, there are three requirements on Mandrake:
1. always build the iso images in the same component order, so that
rsync can track the differences, and
2. only use rsync for all file transfers within MandrakeSoft and
across the mirrors involved in building the beta so as to preserve
the timestamp information properly across time zones (rsync is very
good at this). You may have to consider changing all involved
machines to run on GMT, and
3. Remove all version and release and patch level information from
file names so that rsync will recognise which client file a changed
server file refers to. The version, release and patch information
can be carried in the name of the directory which wraps these
fixed-name files.
These are extremely TOUGH requirements, I agree. Major rethinking
necessary. A task force within Mandrakesoft should be set up to
explore all this.
However, your primary free.fr mirror precsently rejects attempts to
use rsync, and the beta3 images have not yet propagated from it to my
aarnet mirror (4 days have passed!).
The next beta update should not be permitted to occur until all these
problems are resolved.
Submitted for your consideration, and comment from beta testers.
--
Regards,
Ron. [AU] - sent by Mandrake Linux.
