-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ciaran McCreesh wrote: > On Sun, 6 May 2007 00:25:20 +0200 > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: >> It is critical if your filesystem might be damaged, if there are >> security issues of any kind, or if something stops working. > > It is critical if it requires manual action by many or the majority of > targetted users. >
I might offer a primarily-end-user perspective. First - the ELOG feature added a few months back (allowing emailing of notices/etc) is GREAT! Now I can track read/unread using my email software, which is clearly suited to such purposes. I think that this mechanism is ideal for most notices. However, maybe I can suggest a few categories that need advance warning: 1. Cases where upgrading a major dependency requires revdep-rebuild. For example, if my glibc upgrade borks half the system until I recompile 3/4ths of it I'd like to know about that BEFORE installing it. 2. Updates to server-oriented software (sendmail/ postfix/ apache/ mysql/ postgres/ mythtv/ etc) that require significant manual tweaks. People running this kind of software generally don't want unexpected downtime, even in situations that don't demand test environments. 3. Updates of any kind that could prevent booting or network access if mishandled. You don't want users leaving their systems in an unbootable state for more than a few minutes, or in a state where it is hard to get to online info. 4. Anything security-related that requires advance warning. Honestly, I couldn't think of an example of this. If a package leaves the system insecure by default that would qualify, but I doubt anybody would design such a package in the first place. I think that what is really needed are guidelines. No user is going to complain about getting 14 news items when they should have gotten 13. On the other hand, if they get 100 instead of 5 that would be an issue. As long as we don't go hog-wild I'd think that any issues would be easily addressed with time. Right now I think users would appreciate advance notice about some things that have caused major headaches in the past (ABI breaks/etc). I think the priority setting idea was a good one - even if people argue over whether something is a 3 or a 4 on the 1-5 scale, at least we know the difference between a 1 and a 5. And I'd like to think that devs have better things to do than nitpick each other's ebuilds over things like that... :) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFGPS0BG4/rWKZmVWkRAm+cAJ9pmr17brezGsdw3v7LIq9ARveinwCfUB3d Oo3vanOr3cewFgc8DDjfzVo= =tRk/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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