On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 03:34:20PM +0100, Martin Schulze wrote: > > One of the biggest disadvantages of Debian for me is the long time > > it takes for a new stable version. > > > > What about saying something like: the next stable release comes in > > the beginning of 2006? > > The release date for a Debian release is not set by a calendar but by > quality. At least that's been the case including sarge. Hence, such > a sentence would not mean anything.
Then let's accept the premise behind the whole testing idea and target Sarge+1 for Sarge+6 months. Or does the <foo> team have plan that will stall that release for another year? > What if the installer is broken at that time? debian-installer is good as it is now. Sarge+6 months should be able to use more or less the same installer, plus new drivers. And a cursory look at the debian installer code gives me the impression that adding new drivers should be relatively easy. > What if the buildd network is busted at that time? Well, I surely hope the buildd network won't be busted for x time (where x is much larger than a couple of weeks). Do you have something concrete in mind (like, say, one half of an arch builders bailing out because people can't seem to talk to each other or something like that?) > What if n library transitions are in progress at that time? Well... according to the testing delus^Widea, this should not happen. Or, if it happens, it should be not so difficult to handle... Oh... hi, reality... nice to make your acquaintance. > What if our archive suite lacks an important improvement which is a > requirement for being able to maintain the new stable release? Come on. This one really feels like a cheap excuse. First, are any such important-can't-wait-a-second-longer improvements scheduled? Second, there's such a thing as testing. No, not that part of the archive. Real testing. Calling for people to upload real packages to a testing archive. Doing real work with the testing archive. Bouncing real uploads from the real archive to the testing archive. Such things. Third, there's also planning ahead. If Bar wants to absolutely have that important improvement before sarge+1, Bar should allot something like 3-4 *months* before the target release date for the in-archive testing phase and be ready to commit some time for urgent fixes. If that can't be done because all this is volunteer work and all those things (that I can fully relate to and I'm not downplaying one iota!), then sorry, we can't have that important improvement. IOW, don't stall the whole project because of your pet peeve. > Sure, you could still release, but would you really like to have such > a release? I would like to get rid of the "Debian can't make timely releases" and "Debian stable is a bunch of out-of-date software" stigmas. In fewer words: I want to have the cake and eat it, too. Debian stable without the 2 year lapsus in between. > What if security support for a new release cannot be guaranteed at > that time? That is a show stopper. "We did our best, but we can't release Debian Sarge+1 at this time. New target date for release: ..." If you give people a target to work with, with enough time (and "enough" has to take into consideration that Debian is still mostly put together by volunteers), people can plan ahead. The current chaos does not give *developers* this. And users get frustrated each time they see a Debian 3.0rX come out, but no sarge in sight. I do get your point and I'm not saying that it is easy (or even possible!) to stick to a faster release schedule, but refusing it upfromt without trying does not help. Marcelo